Canadian home construction is on pace for its best year since the 2008-2009 recession, with builders showing no sign of being slowed by rising interest rates or fears of a housing correction.

Work began on an annualized 222,324 homes in July, the third-fastest monthly pace since 2012, the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corp. reported Wednesday. Starts have averaged about 215,000 in 2017, which puts the industry on track for the most new residential construction since 2007 if the current pace continues.

It’s widely agreed that housing markets across the U.S. are hurting for new inventory, driving up prices and postponing homeownership for young Americans. What’s driving the inventory shortage is a murkier matter.

A new report from Trulia tests some popular explanations and comes to this conclusion: We’re going to have to build our way out of it.

In a logical world, builders would rush to put up homes in the U.S. regions adding jobs at the fastest pace. In reality, it's not so simple.

San Francisco's metropolitan area added 373,000 net new jobs in the last five years—but issued permits for only 58,000 units of new housing. The lack of new construction has exacerbated housing costs in the Bay Area, making the San Francisco metro among the cruelest markets in the U.S. Over the same period, Houston added 346,000 jobs and permitted 260,000 new dwellings, five times as many units per new job as San Francisco.

Orange County, CA-based Raintree Partners is investing big time in California. The real estate investment company announced last week that it currently under construction on three mixed-use projects in California totaling more than $500 million in value.

Genton Property Group (GPG) announced May 30 that construction on the Four Seasons Private Residences Los Angeles is underway this week after finalization and funding of a $239 million construction loan last week.

The home building industry “has turned brisk and is gaining momentum as consumers of various ages, motivated by high consumer confidence, seek new places to live,” ABC News reported.

This March single-family homes sales increased by 15.6 percent over March of last year, according to the U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Furthermore, “the median national price paid for new homes has been rising steeply, ascending from about $230,000 in 2012 to about $311,000 currently."

Since 2007, the U.S. has been underbilling, ABC News stated: “[T]he nation needs an estimated 1.5 million new homes of various types annually to meet the demand, but there haven’t been that many since 2007. Since then, the scenario has been one of pronounced under-building. After the housing bubble popped in 2008, home sales plummeted, bottoming out in 2013-14. But it started picking up markedly in late 2015/early 2016.”

Aberdeen Investment Management projects that "pent-up demand" for homes "will propel industry growth well into the 2020s."

New York’s condo market is brimming with costly apartments in glittering new towers. Now it’s about to get more pricey homes, this time in a building that’s more than a century old.

Ziel Feldman’s HFZ Capital Group plans to convert 95 empty rental units at the Belnord, a gated complex occupying a full square block on the Upper West Side, into condos that will be listed at $3,000 a square foot on average -- more than the boroughwide average for new-development sales in the first quarter. He’s hired architect Robert A.M. Stern for the project at the landmarked limestone-and-brick building, reaching for a formula that’s succeeded at other properties that have pushed price boundaries in Manhattan.

SummerHill Homes Group is taking advantage of a hot construction market and is building across California. The development company currently has more than a dozen residential projects underway across the state worth approximately $2.5 billion.

The World Economic Forum and The Boston Consulting Group recently released a report to encourage innovators redefine the AEC industry. They give recommendations and feature ten lighthouse innovation case studies to demonstrate the potential of innovation.

The report is the second publication of the multi-year Future of Construction project. The first report showed how many innovations have emerged but have not yet been broadly adopted. The second report suggests remedies, drawing key lessons and policy recommendations from leading innovators and disruptors.

ENR Southwest is pleased to announce this year’s class of Top Young Professionals in the architecture, engineering and construction community. Previously referred to as the Top 20 Under 40 competition, the program has been refined to allow judges to select fewer than 20 honorees if candidates do not reach the judges’ threshold of excellence.

Ashiana Housing Ltd. led developers higher in Mumbai after India proposed to give “infrastructure status” to affordable housing in the South Asian nation.

Ashiana Housing rose 20 percent to 173.25 rupees at 2:22 p.m. in Mumbai, Kolte-Patil Developers Ltd. added 14 percent and Ganesh Housing Corp. climbed 7.6 percent after Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said that “affordable housing will now be given infrastructure status, which will enable these projects to avail the associated benefits.” He was presenting the federal budget for the year starting April 1 to lawmakers.

Reprinted courtesy of Anto Antony, Bloomberg and Pooja Thakur Mahrotri, Bloomberg