New homes fill housing needs as big as Guthrie

Enough homes were built in the Oklahoma City area last year to house all the people in Guthrie.

And 2016 was a slow year, with 4,383 new houses, a 16-percent drop from 2015, when 5,211 houses were built — enough to hold everyone in Miami, OK.

This episode of Fun with Housing Stats is brought to you by the U.S. Census Bureau, which estimates 2.53 people per household in Oklahoma County, and Dharma Inc. in Norman, publisher of The Builder Report, which provides detailed coverage of construction across the metro area.

The Builder Report tracks construction in Oklahoma City, unincorporated Oklahoma County, Blanchard, Choctaw, Del City, Edmond, Midwest City, Moore, Mustang, Newcastle, Noble, Norman, Shawnee, Tuttle, Warr Acres and Yukon.

For more about Dharma, go to www. dharma-inc.com/.

Here are some more highlights from the yearend report.

• The 4,384 houses built last year amounted to a level comparable to 2008, when 3,596 were built.

• The busiest month was April, with 500, the slowest month was January, with 296. That sounds normal, doesn’t it? Spring being a high point and dead of winter being a low point? But that’s not always the case.

In 2014, for example, January tied with May for busiest month, with 510, and February, also dead

of winter, was slowest, with 358.

• In Oklahoma City, the north side outbuilt the south side, 1,786 to 1,087.

• Most new houses were in the $100,000$150,000 price range — 1,112, down from 1,322 in 2015, but still fully 25 percent of all new construction in 2016.

The price range with the least construction was $450,000$500,000, with 45 new houses started, down from 61 in 2015.

• The top five busiest builders in 2016 were 1. Ideal Homes of Norman, with 357 starts; 2. Home Creations, with 306; 3. Rausch Coleman Homes OKC, with 236; 4. Taber Built Homes LLC, with 211; and 5. Landmark Fine Homes LLC, with 144.

After that, production per builder dropped off fast. At a glance, you can tell that most homebuilders here are small businesses.

Note: Aside from $10.7 billion— with a B — national D.R. Horton Inc., based in Fort Worth, Texas, now the largest homebuilding company in the country, all of the rest of the top builders here are local. Horton built 87 houses last year.

Of the others building fewer than 100 houses but still in the top, the numbers fell this way: One company built 95 houses; one built 70; two built 60-69; one built 58; three built 40-49; eight built 30-39; and 11 built 20 to 29.

• Finally, this explains why traffic around where I live in Edmond and northwest Oklahoma City is getting so bad: Three of the top five busiest neighborhoods are within 3 miles.

The five most active subdivisions in 2016:

1. Valencia, bounded by NW 178, NW 192, May and Pennsylvania avenues, with 146 houses.

2. The Grove, due west, bounded by NW 178, NW 192, May and Portland avenues, with 94.

3. Timber Creek, Yukon, with 89.

4. Rush Brook, southeast of NW 192 and N Western Avenue, with

72.

5. Williamson Farms, southwest of SW 119 and S Meridian Avenue, with 62.