Housing starts recovered last month following a sharp April decline. There has been no growth, however, during the last several months. Total housing starts increased 6.8% (28.6% y/y) during May to 914,000 (AR) from 856,000 in April, initially reported as 853,000 mil. Expectations had been for 950,000 starts in the Action Economics survey. Starts of multi-family units recovered 21.6% (60.7% y/y) to 315,000 and made up half of April's drop. Starts of single-family homes, however, ticked just 0.3% higher (16.3% y/y) to 599,000. These starts have been trending sideways since last fall.

By region, higher starts in the South led last month's recovery with a 17.8% increase (33.5% y/y) to 490,000. Starts in the West also rebounded 5.7% (39.0% y/y) to 221,000 and made up all of April's drop. Working the other way, housing starts in the Northeast fell 9.0% (-9.0% y/y), the fourth monthly decline this year. Starts were down 38.3% from the December peak. In the Midwest, housing starts fell 13.7% last month (+23.4% y/y) to 132,000.

Building permits backpedaled 3.1% (+20.8% y/y) to 974,000 last month following a 12.9% April jump. Permits to build single-family homes gained 1.3% (24.6% y/y) to 622,000, the high for the economic recovery. Permits to build multi-family units fell 10.0% (+14.7% y/y) to 352,000.

The housing starts figures can be found in Haver's USECON database. The expectations figure is contained in the AS1REPNA database.