Housing starts have doubled since 2009, but are still well off what they were at the peak they reached in 2005

My favorite blog for economics information is the CalculatedRisk Blog.  One of the indexes (or, if you prefer, indices) the CR Blog reports on each month is the AIA ABI Index.  Today, the CR Blog had an article that contained a very interesting table.  See below. 

Although Reprographers in major metropolitan markets have, historically speaking, generated most of their reprographics services revenues from printing plans and specifications for “non-residential” projects (with an exception being that apartment and condo projects are not non-res projects but are an important source of plan and spec printing revenues), reprographics services revenues from “res” projects were an important source of revenues for our industry.  When you take a look at the chart below, you’ll notice that housing starts in 2015 are estimated to be double the low point we reached in 2009, but note also that housing starts in 2015 are still WELL BELOW where they were at their peak in 2005.  Our civil-site-survey engineering and land planning customers (many of whom derived a significant portion of their revenues from home building developers) were the first category of customers to feel the slow down that began in 2006 …. and, by the end of 2007, revenues from that category of customers was giving most of us a clear “heads-up” as to what was going to happen in 2008/2009.  Although non-res project strength has increased over the past three years – generating improved revenues for Reprographers (but, certainly not what those revenues were in past years), we still see revenues “are off”, and one of those reasons (not to mention “digitization”) has to do with the “res” market still being well off what it was, in spite of the fact that the “res” business has doubled since its low in 2009.

Source of this table:  CalculatedRisk Blog

Housing Starts and New Home Sales (000s)
	Housing Starts	Change	New Home Sales	Change
2005	2068	---	1,283	---
2006	1801	-12.9%	1,051	-18.1%
2007	1355	-24.8%	776	-26.2%
2008	906	-33.2%	485	-37.5%
2009	554	-38.8%	375	-22.7%
2010	587	5.9%	323	-13.9%
2011	609	3.7%	306	-5.3%
2012	781	28.2%	368	20.3%
2013	925	18.5%	429	16.6%
2014	1003	8.5%	437	1.9%
20151	1110	10.6%	498	14.0%
12015 estimated