Houston and D-FW tops for homebuilding in 2013
Houston and the Dallas-Fort Worth area topped the country for single-family home construction in 2013.
And Texas was the leading state in single-family building permits, according to data from the National Association of Home Builders.
The Houston area recorded 34,510 single-family homebuilding permits and in the D-FW area builders received permits to start 20,810 houses, according to the builders association data.
Atlanta was the third busiest building market with 14,800 permits.
Texas recorded almost 90,000 single-family homebuilding permits last year. That was out of an estimated 621,000 nationwide starts.
By Steve Brown
stevebrown@dallasnews.com
Texas and New York top new business establishment list
Two states, Texas and New York, accounted for nearly 40 percent of all the new businesses established in the United States since 2009, a study found.
The study, conducted by employment agency CareerBuilder together with Economic Modeling Specialists International, found that 22 percent of all new business establishments begun in 2009 through 2012 were in Texas and that 16 percent were in New York.
The study counted new, established businesses, which is defined as economic activity associated with a specific location. As such, if a chain of pizza parlors is established, each location counts as a new business establishment.
The study found between 115,000 and 210,000 net new private business establishments were opened each year from 2001 to 2007.
In the ensuing post-recession years the numbers have diminished. The number of new establishments “hasn’t approached 100,000 per year since the [economic] downturn,” the study released Thursday said.
“The number of private-sector business establishments grew just 2 percent from 2009 to 2012 after growing 12 percent from 2001 to 2007,” said Matt Ferguson, chief executive officer at CareerBuilder.
The study ranked Illinois, Florida, Washington, Nebraska and North Dakota as the top states for new business establishments after Texas and New York.
The states on the low end of the list include Michigan, New Jersey, Idaho, Colorado, Kansas and California.
The state with the worst post-recession track record, Michigan, lost nearly 14,000 business establishments from 2009 to 2012, a 6 percent drop to 232,331 businesses.
The biggest losses were in construction, finance and insurance and real estate, which declined by 16 percent, 9 percent and 7 percent, respectively.