Recent Updates

  • Japan: Checks and Bills Clearing (Mar)
  • US: Existing Home Sales Detail (Mar)
  • UAE: CPI (Mar), Dubai GDP (Q4); Lebanon: CPI (Mar); Israel: PMI (Mar), Quantity of New Dwellings Demanded (Feb); Palestine: Public Debt (Mar-Prelim); Saudi Arabia: Real Estate Price Index (Q1)
  • Canada: Wholesale Trade (Feb)
  • US: Chicago Fed National Activity Index (Mar)
  • more updates...

Economy in Brief

U.S. Housing Starts Improve Slightly
by Tom Moeller  June 16, 2011

New activity in the housing sector continued to languish last month. Housing starts rose just 3.5% during May to 560,000 (AR) following an 8.8% April decline, initially reported as -10.6% . The latest figure remained near the lowest in two years and compared to Consensus expectations for 546,000 starts.

Single-family starts rose 3.7% and recovered the prior month's decline. Activity in the multi-family area showed an increase of just 2.9% but that followed a 21.7% April drop. Starts of 2-to-4 building units fell by one-half m/m (-41.7% y/y) but starts of larger buildings with 5 or more units rose 8.9% (24.1% y/y).

Building permits rose 8.7% (5.2% y/y). Single-family permits rose 2.5% (-6.9% y/y) while multi-family permits rose by nearly one-quarter m/m (40.8% y/y).

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

Housing Starts (000s, SAAR) May Apr Mar Y/Y % 2010 2009 2008
Total 560 541 593 -3.4 585 554 900
 Single-Family 419 404 418 -8.9 471 442 616
 Multi-Family 141 137 175 17.5 114 112 284
Starts By Region
 Northeast 58 60 61 -18.3 72 61 120
 Midwest 94 98 81 -11.3 98 95 134
 South 271 267 337 -6.2 296 281 451
 West 137 116 114 20.2 120 117 195
Building Permits 612 563 574 5.2 603 582 896
close
large image