The 51 permits issued in August of this year were valued at $11,217,702. Coincidentally, 51 permits also were issued in August of last year, but their value was $28,231,327.
Richard Green, director of the University of Southern California Lusk Center for Real Estate, said he's unimpressed by the monthly increase.
"In a normal year, a city the size of Bakersfield would build a lot more than 51 houses in a month," he said. "If you can sustain that for three months in a row, maybe that's something to pay attention to, but for now I wouldn't make too much of it."
Don't forget that nationally, the country is "still below the lowest trough in home building since World War II, and we've been there for about three years now," Green added. "I hope I'm wrong but right now I don't see anything that's going to change that any time soon."
There was no comparable jump in August in unincorporated areas of the county.
Kern County issued 14 new single-family home permits in August, down from 19 in July but twice the number of permits the county issued a year earlier.
Like the city of Bakersfield, Kern County took in a "tremendous" number of permits in December ahead of the building code change that took effect at the beginning of the year, said Robert Sawyer, a principal building inspector for the county.
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