Experts say December is supposed to be a slow month for new home sales.

They obviously forgot to tell new home buyers in Manteca.

Builders have submitted requests to the City of Manteca for 55 homes they sold in December. That is after they built a record 75 new homes in December.

To put that in perspective the new home sales are 83 percent more than the 30 homes sold in December of 2019 and 266 percent more than the homes sold in December of 2018.

Manteca ended 2020 with the city issuing 75 permits for single family homes in December. It reflects a 158 percent jump over December of 2019 when permits for 29 new homes were issued. There were 18 new homes built in December of 2018.

It is likely new home starts this month will match or exceed the 75 homes started in December. That’s because the city at the start of the month will receive additional permit requests that can be processed along with the applications in review before the end of January.

Pandemic triggers

surge in home sales

New home construction started accelerating in April during the first full-month of the pandemic lockdown. That was when many Bay Area companies allowed large swaths of their workforce to work from home.

At the same construction of traditional single family new homes in tech driven cities across the Bay Area from the Diablo Range to the Pacific Ocean is much like the Fortran programming language that while in use is becoming a smaller piece of the overall programming pie with each passing year.

And the traditional single family homes being built — usually on lots significantly smaller than in Manteca — exceed $1.1 million in the inner Silicon Valley cities and are pushing $1 million in areas such as Livermore.

Those two factors coupled with the fact areas like San Jose continue to generate jobs in numbers exceeding available housing being built and 30-year fixed mortgage rates at a historic low of 2.66 percent are fueling the Manteca new home buying surge.

It also helps that Manteca — just like Lathrop — has deep inventory of approved lots that will accommodate the home type the bulk of buyers who are willing to commute over the Altamont Pass want.

644 new single family

homes started in 2020

Manteca ended 2020 issuing 644 permits for new single family homes. That was the fifth largest annual number of housing starts going back at least 35 years.

In the past five years Manteca has built or started 3,183 new homes or an average of 636 houses a year.

That is less that the five-year period from 2000 to 2004 when 3,887 new homes were built including 2000 when a record 1,075 new homes were built. The annual average for the five years was 777 homes a year.

Keep in mind none of the numbers in this story include apartment units or other multi-family housing types that were built. If you added apartment units, the number of dwelling units built or started from 2016 to 2020 would total 3,690 and from 2000 to 2004 it would total 4,185.

Based on the building pace the started in April, Manteca is on target to exceed 810 new single family homes being started in 2021.  That would exceed the 803 homes built in the second highest year on record in 2002.

Manteca may not reach that mark, however, because of issues concerning whether the city can process grading plans and such in time to avoid some builders from having to take a timeout even though they have projects approved. An example is Atherton Homes that has almost all of their remaining lots in its new neighborhood east of Woodward Park. Atherton’s next neighborhood will be in the 1,301-home Griffin Park endeavor on South Main Street where orchard removal is now underway.

$1.09 billion in three years

 Overall, private sector building activity in 2020 had a construction value of $336.7 million. It is the second highest year on record. Topping the list is 2019 at $444 million. Third is 2018 with $314.7 million.

That means in three years Manteca has seen $1.09 billion in new construction excluding public works projects such as the Union Road interchange and Manteca Unified campus upgrades.

Manteca had just under $1.25 billion in new construction during the first decade of this century.

Much of the past three years has been powered by massive distribution center style buildings as well as the 500-room Great Wolf project. At $180 million, the indoor water park resort is the most expensive construction investment in the city’s history.

To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com