The five paragraphs below come from the beginning of an article (authored by Scott Judy) that I came across on Southeast.Construction.com. After the first five paragraphs, you’ll find a link to the full article that Scott wrote.
“Earlier this year, I blogged about the four-state region's 2011 construction forecast, courtesy of information from McGraw-Hill Construction, publisher of ENR Southeast. At that time, McGraw-Hill Construction was predicting some fairly rosy scenarios for the Southeast.
The company projected the volume of Florida's construction contracts to grow by 9% overall, for example. The optimism expressed for the Sunshine State was mild compared to the 40% and 43% overall gains predicted for Georgia and South Carolina, respectively. North Carolina, on the other hand, was in line for a 2% decline in 2011.
So far, reality isn't matching up with these predictions. Instead, through the first quarter of 2011, three of the four Southeast states are down significantly, and the fourth is off slightly compared to last year's pace, according to McGraw-Hill Construction.
State-by-state, it's not pretty. The biggest of the Southeast states, Florida, is 29% behind the early pace of 2010, with about $5.1 billion in new contracts through the first three months of the year. It could've been worse, as both January and February saw 50% declines in monthly contracts. A 35% overall jump in March improved the numbers from merely horrible to just plain bad.
It gets worse. Thanks to a 36% overall decline in the value of its March contracts, Georgia is now 30% behind its first-quarter pace of 2010, with nearly $2.2 billion in new contracts so far this year. And North Carolina, fresh off a 52% nosedive in March, is now 34% behind 2010, with nearly $2.8 billion in new contracts.”
Click on this link to access the complete article:
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