El Dorado Hills Citizens Alliance News
July 29, 2006
www.edhca.net     email: alliance@edhca.net

Building permits for new homes surged in 3rd week of July

In the week of 7/15 to 7/21 applications were received for construction of about 50 new housing units and master planning for about 20 more. In contrast, the total for the entire month of June was 97.

Anyone can check current statistics through links on the County's web page for Building Services reports.(see note at end of this page for some details about weekly numbers.)

This week's building permits for single family homes included four batches of homes: Two by Pulte in Serrano, one by Richmond American in The Promontory, and one by Richmond American in South Lake Tahoe for master planning of about 20 homes. All of the applications by Pulte and Richmond American in Serrano and the Promontory were for manufactured housing.

This may be part of the surge of permit applications that many of us have anticipated, as developers pull permits before TIM fees increase 44% in August.  Last week's count of applications was at least twice the rate forecast by the El Dorado County General Plan EIR.  Other recent building permit counts for the County were 97 new single family homes in the month of June and 1,078 in fiscal year 2005/2006. FY 06 also had applications to build 53 granny flats ("second dwelling"), 20 apartment units, and 8 duplex units. The fiscal year's total was very close but slightly below the General Plan EIR's forecast.


Footnote on weekly numbers:

Counts in this note from weekly reports are approximate because data mining from the Development Services documents is mainly a manual process. We may automate this data mining function in the future, but this is a low priority.

Numbers reported for single family homes pick up entries with these field values:

R-PERMIT TYPE:   BUILDG    (permit for construction
                                                     - not actions such as electrical work, remodeling, repair, or others)
CLASS:                   NEW         (new structure, not expansion, replacement, or others)
USE:                        1-FMLY or M1FMLY    (single family home or manufactured single family home)

Careful totaling of new housing units would include various other use codes, such as:

APRTMT, M-APTS, 2-FMLY (duplex), and 2NDDWG (second dwelling -- granny flat)