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Economy in Brief
Japan's Inflation Shows Mixed Gains
Japan's inflation rose by 0.4% in July...
U.S. Existing Home Sales Continue to Fall in July
Existing home sales declined 5.9% (-20.2% y/y) in July to 4.810 million units...
U.S. Index of Leading Indicators Fell Again in July
The Conference Board's Composite Leading Economic Indicators Index fell 0.4% m/m...
U.S. Philly Fed General Activity Index Back to Positive Reading in August
The current general activity diffusion index rose nearly 19 points in August to 6.2...
U.S. Unemployment Claims Slightly Lower
Initial claims for unemployment insurance went down 2,000 in the week ended August 13 to 250,000...
Viewpoints
Commentaries are the opinions of the author and do not reflect the views of Haver Analytics.
by Tom Moeller July 18, 2007
Housing starts rose 2.3% during June to 1.467M and slightly beat Consensus expectations for 1.45M starts. The increase did little to dampen this years pace of 20%+ y/y declines.
The increase in June starts was all in multi-family structures. These rose 12.5% to 316,000 but essentially have been moving sideways.
Single-family starts slipped 0.2% to 1.15M, down for the third month in a row.
By region, single-family housing starts in the South fell a hard 4.6% (-27.2% y/y). Single-family starts in the Northeast rose 0.9% (19.6% y/y) and starts in the Midwest rose 3.1% (-21.7% y/y). Out West starts recovered 6.7% (-20.3% y/y).
Todays testimony by Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke can be found here.
Housing Starts (000s, AR) | June | May | Y/Y | 2006 | 2005 | 2004 |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Total | 1,467 | 1,434 | -19.4% | 1,819 | 2,073 | 1,950 |
Single-family | 1,151 | 1,153 | -21.6% | 1,478 | 1,719 | 1,604 |
Multi-family | 316 | 281 | -9.7% | 341 | 354 | 345 |
Building Permits | 1,596 | 1,513 | -24.3% | 1,834 | 2,159 | 2,058 |