
Simon Says: New Housing BOOM in the CSRA!
The Augusta Leading Economic Index (LEI) increased 1.9 percent in March from April. This is the highest monthly increase since August 2020, when we were coming out of the covid lockdown. The LEI is 1.4 percent higher than a year ago. The big driver of this month’s data was residential building permits, which were 631 in March, the highest on record going back to 2000. 298 permits were for 1-unit structures, and 329 were for 5 units or more. Although there has been news of a cooling of the national