December Residential Permit Snapshot - Phoenix MSA

Hello everyone, hope your year is off to a great start! Permit numbers for December are below. We’ll keep it brief so you can get back to getting ready for the Open…

Single Family

For single family homes, the monthly total of 1,653 was 21.10% lower than the count from a year ago while the trailing 12-month number of 30,166 is slightly above the average since 2000 (26,332). The monthly number is also below both the 12-month and long-term averages, meaning December was a slower month for homebuilding permits.

Multifamily

Multifamily permits came in at 669, which was 55.64% lower than a year ago. The trailing12-month count came in at 15,349, a retreat from the November ‘23 peak of 23,024 but still 1.7x the long-term average of 9,003. The 669 count is the lowest monthly since May of 2024 (356) and January 2023 before that (477).

Combined

The combined trailing 12-month permit count decreased 0.27% from the previous year and down 2.47% from last month, basically reflecting flat permitting levels. The major difference from 1 year ago until now is the make-up of the counts. Last year, multifamily permits accounted for 45.64% of the combined number, while in 2024, they represented 33.72% of the total.

Since 2000, multifamily permits have made up 25.48% of the total permit count, so it appears the market is reverting to the mean when it comes to the balance between multifamily and single family permitting.

Thanks for reading, as always, please reach out with anything we can help you with.

Thanks,

John & Ramey