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Believe it or not, home construction applications are UP

With real estate sales and values way down from their historic highs of about three years ago, you’d think that developers would be thinking about just about anything except building more new houses.
But you would be wrong.
Developers have been submitting large numbers of proposals for new homes and new commercial developments to state approval agencies. How many? Applications have been filed for more than a half-million new homes as well as about 500 million square feet of commercial space.
What are they thinking?
State officials say it is owners or large land tracts that are behind the push for more development approvals. Whether new homes and communities are being built or not, the people who own those large tracts of land want the permits to build. It increases the land’s value, and it puts the land in a good position to host new developments if and when the market conditions improve.
Much of the land in question is now zoned agricultural, or is envirtonmentally sensitive. But if that land becomes approved for residential or commercial development, it suddenly becomes worth a lot more money.
With real estate in a full stall, you wouldn’t think that new development applications would be taken seriously. But with government and business hoping for an economic jump start, just about anything is possible.

Tags: building permits, new construction, pinellas, real estate