Area home-construction permit filings tick up

Permit filings for home construction in central Indiana edged up in June as the market continued to show slow but mostly steady growth.

Homebuilders filed 484 single-family building permits in the nine-county metro area in June, the Builders Association of Greater Indianapolis said Tuesday. That’s 2 percent, or 10, more permits than were filed in June 2013.

Filings have shown slight year-over-year improvement in four of this year’s six months. They were down 1 percent in January and flat in May.

Through the first six months of the year, 2,673 permits have been filed in central Indiana, an increase of 3 percent over the same period of 2013.

Hamilton County led the area with 170 permits filed in June, a rise of one permit over June 2013.

Marion County saw 70 June filings, up 25 percent.

Johnson County saw a 9-percent decrease, with 58 filings. Permits were up 14 percent in Hancock County, to 42.

 Filings were up 17 percent in Hendricks County, to 69, and down 16 percent in Boone County, to 49.

Fewer than 15 permits each were filed in Madison, Morgan and Shelby counties.

The overall local increase bucked the national trend. U.S. home construction fell 9.3 percent in June to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 893,000 homes, the Commerce Department said last week.

The worse-than-expected June performance reflected a big drop in activity in the South, where construction plunged by 29.6 percent last month. Other regions all showed improvement.