88,000 new homes, condos and apartment units were in the application pipeline at the start of the year, up 23,000 from a year earlier … AND, the year before was a record itself.

Do these new numbers from Hanley Wood Market Intelligence mean there will be so many homes that prices will finally flatten and even slide backwards? Not likely. Many projects are in the long slog of applications that local governments are now taking, on average, three years to process and approve. Experience shows that one in five will be rejected. Analysts expect 2005 to be another year like the last three, with home sales at unprecedented levels.