Total housing starts rose 1.5% (-2.9% y/y) during October to 1.228 million units (AR) from 1.210 million in September, revised from 1.201 million. The rise matched expectations for 1.228 million starts in the Action Economics Forecast Survey.

A 10.3% rise (-3.7% y/y) in starts of multi-family units to 363,000 accounted for last month's rise in the total. It followed a 15.6% decline. Starts of single-family units fell 1.8% (-2.6% y/y) to 865,000, down for the second straight month.

Last month's increase reflected a one-third improvement (5.0% y/y) in the Midwest to 210,000 units from 158,000. Starts in the South rose 4.7% (-3.4% y/y) to 596,000 from 569,000. Countering these increases was a 34.1% decline in the Northeast to 87,000 (-40.0% y/y), which more-than-reversed the rise during September. Housing starts in the West fell 4.6% (+10.6% y/y) to 335,000 as it countered the prior month's increase.

Building permits slipped 0.6% (-6.0% y/y) to 1.263 million from 1.270 million after a 1.7% increase. Single-family permits eased 0.6% both m/m and y/y to 849,000. Permits to build multi-family homes slipped 0.5% (-15.3% y/y) to 414,000, the lowest level since March 2016.

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