Residential permits fall 74%

The decline mirrored a national one that saw housing starts fall across the country; tight credit and slack sales are cited as reasons for the decline in the city.
New residential construction in the city continued to plummet in November as developers grappled with tight credit markets and dwindling sales.

Permits for new residential buildings fell 74% to 63 in November compared with a year earlier, while the units authorized by those permits dropped 48% to 1,235, according to new data from the U.S. Census Bureau. The scarcity of new residential projects drove the value of construction associated with permits more than four times lower than November 2007, to just over $51 million.