Have you noticed the building boom in NJ?

There is a residential construction boom happening in New Jersey and all over the country.

Last year in February, residential construction was up 22% nationally, which was the largest growth since 2006, according to Fortune.

The country as a whole is at a 5.24 million unit housing shortage, according to Realtor.com data. Some of the reasons cited in a CNBC report are a lumber shortage, a worker shortage and supply chain issues.

If you look around, most suburban and even rural towns in New Jersey, there are single home, townhome and apartment developments going up just about everywhere.

Go onto the NextDoor app in any New Jersey county or area and you'll see dozens of questions about "what is going up at this location or on that road."

Most construction sites list what's going up right after they break ground.

You'll see signs like "Townhomes from the low $400,000's" or "Luxury Apartments" with some trendy well research name of the new complex. A few reasons for the boom here are mortgage rates were at a record.

At the beginning of 2021, the average fixed-rate mortgage dropped to a 50-year low of 2.65%. That made buying a home more affordable and attractive to many.

As the millennial generation (those born between 1981 and 1996) gets older, they’ve started buying houses to settle down or start families.

Millennials now make up 43% of home buyers, which is the biggest share of any generation. Remote work has made it easier to choose a wider variety of more desirable locations. Plus, after the pandemic urban areas became less desirable for young people to settle down and raise families.

Some of these sprawling developments are over-55 communities because the baby boomers are downsizing and don't want to leave their kids and grandkids behind for the warmer climates of the Carolinas or Florida.

Some of these places look like cookie-cutter army barracks but the older folks are scooping them up with the promise of lower property taxes and maintenance-free living. Plus, the clubhouses are pretty cool.

You have to go pretty far out in the country here in Jersey not to see those new developments popping up. They seem to be just about everywhere.

Opinions expressed in the post above are those of New Jersey 101.5 talk show host Dennis Malloy only.

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