The Pittsburgh Homebuilding Report released its year-end 2017 results for new construction in the six-county metropolitan Pittsburgh market. While the year unfolded mostly as forecast, there were a few noteworthy deviations.
Single-family housing construction was up compared to 2016 but the gains were in attached products, like townhomes and quads. Permits for attached homes jumped more than 25 percent to 1,035 units. Starts for single-family detached homes actually declined by 6.3 percent, to 1,971 homes under construction. In contrast to the national trend, permits for new apartments also increased last year. New apartment construction activity was expected to slow in 2017 but permits for new units increased by 11 percent, to 2,368 units.
Another trend that continued more strongly in 2017 was the migration to the city. Permits for new construction in Pittsburgh proper reached 1,714, or roughly one-third of the total construction for the entire metropolitan statistical area.
In another measure of the economy, job growth returned to Pittsburgh during 2017. Hiring grew by an average of 11,625 jobs monthly in 2017; however, that average is well below the current trend. Job creation increased steadily throughout the year, with the monthly average reaching 16,000 jobs in the fourth quarter. In fact, December’s job growth of 19,300 was the highest year-over-year in 2017. Although there have been later revisions that deflated the preliminary jobs numbers in several of the most recent years, the consistent strength of employment gains in 2017 suggests that the trend of flat employment changed significantly last year.
Project news is light at this time of year but the hospital market continues to expand. Rycon Construction was selected as CM for the first of the AHN neighborhood hospitals in Greensburg. Turner Construction is bidding early packages and expects to release the main specialty contractors bids in mid-February for the $90 million UMPC Hamot tower in Erie. UPMC will be interviewing a handful of architects for its $700 million Transplant and Heart Hospital in Oakland (along with the Hillman/Shadyside expansion) next week, with RFP’s for construction management to follow within the month.