·
November housing starts recovered less than half of the previous month's
little revised decline with a 6.7% increase. The gain to 1.588M was
slightly better than Consensus expectations for a rise to 1.54M starts.
· The year-to-date average for starts of 1.588M was 11.7% below the first eleven months of 2005.
· Single-family starts in November rose 8.1% to 1.281M, recovering less than half of the October decline which was to the lowest level since July 2000. The year-to-date average level of single family starts was 12.6% below 2005.
· Multi-family starts gained back just 1.3% of the 8.5% October drop and were down 4.5% during this year's first eleven months.
· By region, single
family housing starts in the South posted a 14.1% (-22.1% y/y) increase
but that was only about half of the sharp October decline. Single family
starts in the Northeast again were up (-13.6% y/y) but the gains during
the last two months still have not recovered the precipitous 16.7%
decline during September. Starts in the Midwest rose 1.5% (-37.6% y/y)
and starts out West nudged up 1.4% (-38.5% y/y).
· Building permits fell 3.0% after a little revised 5.2% decline during October. This tenth monthly decline this year was to the lowest level since 1997. Permits to start single family homes fell 3.1% (-33.3% y/y) for the second consecutive month to the lowest since 1997.
· What Do Financial Asset Prices Say About the Housing Market? from the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System can be found here.