Construction of a new student housing complex in Orono landed the town as the top host of newly permitted residential construction last year.
Multi-unit construction in Westbrook, Scarborough and Portland also picked up, reflecting continued housing growth in and near Maine’s largest city.
Building permits issued in those areas helped boost the statewide total of newly permitted units by 14 percent, with the fastest year-to-year growth in multi-unit buildings, according to census statistics released Monday.
Those figures give more local detail to statewide signals of a gradual recovery for the construction industry, for which the year-over-year estimate of payroll jobs has increased monthly since November 2014.
Among the state’s 20 most populous areas, southern Maine communities continued to have the strongest showing for new construction.
Ranked among those communities, Westbrook showed the second-most dramatic leap after Orono, rising from 12th place in 2014 to second last year. Orono leapt from 20th to first, driven by the new 33-building complex in Orono expected to house about 900 students.
New permits also rose in the Bangor area, while falling slightly in Lewiston and Auburn.
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The latest figures also show a decline in building permits issued in Waterville and Falmouth last year, driven mostly by a reduction in multi-unit permits from 2014, when those two communities topped the rankings for newly issued permits.
In 2014, both of those communities were just above Portland, which remained the steadiest market for new permits during the two years, holding third place with 100 units permitted in 2014 and 150 permitted in 2015. And plenty more new units are on the way for the city with multiple large-scale developments in the works.
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Multi-unit buildings drove most of the increase in permits last year as that building category gained momentum in some southern Maine communities such as Westbrook, Portland and Scarborough, and also picked up 288 new units in Orono.
New single-unit construction, which made up the bulk of the year’s new permits, were up about 5 percent last year, while permits for buildings with 2-4 residential units were basically flat.