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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 |