Residential construction has been making a tepid comeback in recent months; how did March play into that narrative?

Let’s put it this way – March was both a wonderfully positive month and an awfully rough month for residential construction in the Chicagoland area, according to the latest numbers that McGraw Hill Construction provided us.

At $263 million, the area’s total residential construction spending was in line with other major metro housing markets, but when you compare that number to past data sets, the situation gets really complicated real quick.

By year-to-date measures, Chicagoland’s residential construction has posted a huge increase of 101 percent; year-over-year, though, construction is down 36 percent, which is actually the largest of the major metro markets. Considering that the current new construction markets are primarily led by multifamily construction – which is notoriously erratic – those numbers actually make sense.

To get a better idea of how Chicagoland stacked up with the rest of the nation, check out our graphs below: