Housing starts during March improved 2.0% to 926,000 units (-3.5% y/y). The gain followed declines during the prior two months totaling 16.0%. February's level of starts was revised to 908,000 from 897,000. Last month's improvement disappointed expectations for 1.040 million starts in the Action Economics Forecast Survey.

Single-family starts rebounded 4.4% m/m to 618,00 (-3.8% y/y) after two months of decline totaling 18.3%. The gain was accompanied by a 2.5% drop in multi-family starts to 308,000 (-2.7% y/y) following two months of decline totaling 11.2%.

Starts in the Northeast rebounded by more than half m/m to 101,000 units (-19.8% y/y). In the Midwest, starts recovered by roughly one-third to 126,000 (-13.0% y/y) and mostly offset February's decline. Starts in the West declined 19.3% (-3.4% y/y) to 201,000, the lowest level since April. The Southern region realized a 3.5% drop (+3.1% y/y) to 498,000.

Building permits declined 5.7% last month to 1.039 million (+7.6% y/y) from 1.102 million. Single-family permits improved 2.1% to 636,000 (9.4% y/y) but multi-family permits declined 15.9% to 403,000 (+4.6% y/y).

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

The Fed's latest Beige Book covering regional economic conditions is available here.