Last year proved a very positive one for residential new construction, according to the final Census Bureau numbers.

Residential construction spending finished out 2013 at a very fine $352.6 billion, according to the final number crunching by the U.S. Census Bureau.

That’s an 18.0 percent increase above 2012’s $280.3 billion, and per additional analysis by Bill McBride over at Calculated Risk, there’s still plenty of room for improvement – though residential construction is now 54 percent above the post-bubble low of 2009, it’s still 48 percent below its 2006 peak. As the economy continues to grow, McBride wrote, that can only mean good things.

“Private residential construction is usually the largest category for construction spending, and is now the largest category once again,” he wrote. “Usually private residential construction leads the economy, so this is a good sign going forward.”

See our graph below for other important findings in the Census Bureau’s report: