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Permits <br />Definition: <br />This indicator provides evidence on the num- <br />ber of residential buildings that are permit- <br />ted for construction each year. Permit data for <br />Redwood City are compared with those for San <br />Mateo County as a whole and broader regions. <br />The statistic provided scales the number of <br />permits by population. This is done to facilitate <br />comparisons across regions. <br />Why is it important? <br />Building permits are the best indicator avail- <br />able of new units coming on the market. In or- <br />der for a region’s population to grow and flour- <br />ish, new residential properties must be added <br />to the existing stock. Building, both in the City <br />and in the County more generally is an indica- <br />tion of the extent to which new residences are <br />affecting prices through increased supply. <br />How are we doing? <br />It has been approximately 10 years since the <br />bursting of the housing bubble. In that time, <br />San Mateo County has permitted new housing <br />units at a rate faster than the rest of the Bay <br />Area. Since 2005, permitting in Redwood City <br />has exceeded that of the other geographies. <br />Permitting in all geographies has increased <br />throughout the recovery. During the recovery, <br />over the last 5 years, San Mateo County has <br />outpaced the Bay Area and California signifi- <br />cantly, while growth in Redwood City has been <br />much slower. Over the course of the last year <br />of data (between 2014 and 2015), permits in <br />the City have grown faster than any of the other <br />geographies, while permitting has fallen in the <br />County and in the Bay Area as a whole. For <br />most of the last 10 years, new units relative to <br />the overall population have been lower in San <br />Mateo County than in the Bay Area or Califor- <br />nia more broadly, while they have been higher <br />in the City. It is also the case that over those <br />same 10 years the rate of new building permit- <br />ting has increased in the City. Recent trends <br />in permitting suggest that new units coming <br />on line may help to alleviate the pressures for <br />prices to increase, but not dramatically so. <br />Figure 22:Residential Building Permits in Redwood City and Broader Geographies: Units <br />16