Jul
30

Real estate adds economic boost, growth outpaces national pace

The nation’s recovering real estate industries are starting to add oomph to the overall economy.

Newly released detail data on the gross domestic product calculation – the broadest measure of the national business output – show two key real estate factors in the GDP math performing better than the nation as a whole in the first quarter.

Overall GDP fell at a 0.2 percent annual rate in the first three months of the year after growing 2.4 percent in 2014 and 2.2 percent in 2013, the Bureau of Economic Analysis reported.

Construction grew at a 3.9 percent rate in the first quarter, its third-best performance in the past nine quarters.

Only agriculture, retailing, information, management and health care grew faster in the first quarter among 25 slices of the private-sector economy tracked in the GDP math.

Construction, by GDP math, added $686 billion to the economy in the first quarter – or 3.9 percent of GDP. The category’s value to the economy fell 0.7 percent in 2014 and grew 1.9 percent in 2013.

Real estate renting and leasing businesses grew at a 0.7 percent rate in the first quarter, the fourth consecutive quarterly gain.

Real estate renting and leasing, by GDP math, added $2.33 trillion to the economy in the first quarter – or 13.2 percent of GDP.

The category’s value to the economy grew 1.6 percent in 2014 and 1.5 percent in 2013.

While there’s no comparable Orange County data, the surging local real estate industry – trades that employ 1 in 7 locally – had produced 1 in 4 of the new jobs created in the county in the past five years.

See actual article here.