This year proving to be especially positive for Boston new construction

Residential construction spending in the Boston area totaled $237 million in April, a whopping 42 percent decline from the $409 million of April 2014, according to the latest report from Dodge Data & Analytics.

Such a decline, though, is hardly indicative of Boston’s overall construction market, which remains quite positive. In fact, thus far in 2015, Boston’s new residential construction activity is up 35 percent over the same time period in 2014.

Based on Dodge Data’s numbers, below are graphs that compare Boston’s new construction marketplace with those of other large metro areas. The first graph shows residential construction spending in April:

Despite Boston’s strong 2015 numbers, it remains behind nearly all large metro areas in total spending, which doesn’t bode well for the city’s infamous issues with housing affordability.

Things change, though, when looking at the year-over-year growth in construction:

Again, it’s likely that April 2014 was an atypically strong month, so this year’s April is only suffering by comparison – especially given how strong Boston’s year-to-date numbers are:

As positive as those numbers are, they do come with a substantial caveats: first, according to Census Bureau analysis of building permits, 67.3 percent of new construction in Boston is for multifamily units (and 90 percent of multifamily units nowadays are intended for rent), which will have little effect on the area’s housing inventory woes.