“We add jobs, but we don’t build homes. The problem is that we don’t build enough homes,” housing economist Elliot Eisenberg told a gathering of the Colorado Association of Realtors on Tuesday.

 

Eight years into an economic recovery, the country still is starting only around 800,000 single-family homes a year, a level associated with residential construction activity during recessions, he said.

 

“Colorado is growing at twice the pace of the country, but you have housing starts that are at 1995 levels. That is your problem,” said Eisenberg, previously a senior economist with the National Association of Home Builders who started his own economics firm called GraphsandLaughs.

 

Every 90 days, Metrostudy, a Hanley Wood company, goes out and counts the number of foundations poured in the markets it tracks. Last year, it counted 11,038 home starts across metro Denver.

 

That was up 22 percent from 2015 and a huge improvement from 2009, when only 2,718 homes started. But it remains far below the construction peak reached in 2005, when just over 20,000 homes were built.

 

It also falls well short of what the region needs, even after accounting for heavy apartment construction, said John Covert, Metrostudy’s Denver market director.

 

“We are not back to historical averages, nor are we at recessionary levels,” Covert said.

 

Covert estimates the metro Denver market needs 16,000 to 18,000 new homes a year to keep pace with a larger population and all the people moving here. More of the mix will also need to shift from higher-end properties to lower-priced units, where margins are thinner but demand is higher.

 

Getting there, however, will take time. Although Read the story in The Denver Post