The new year is always a precarious time for the new construction marketplace.

Residential construction spending in the Chicagoland area was just shy of $139 million in January, a 10 percent increase from Jan. 2014, according to new numbers from Dodge Data & Analytics.

Though that total represents a steep decline from December, when residential spending totaled $351 million, such drops are all but expected in the construction business cycles; what’s more important is that 2015 has started off the year 10 percent ahead of 2014, which is not only far better than the national decline of 3.4 percent, but also suggests only good things in the months forward.

See our graph below for some additional perspective on Chicagoland’s new construction market, and how it compares with other metro markets: