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Viewpoints
Commentaries are the opinions of the author and do not reflect the views of Haver Analytics.
by Tom Moeller December 17, 2019
New home building remained strong during November. Housing starts increased 3.2% (13.6% y/y) to 1.365 million (SAAR) from 1.323 million in October, revised from 1.314 million. The Action Economics Forecast Survey had expected 1.346 million starts for last month.
Multi-family starts increased 4.9% last month (7.3% y/y) to 427,000 following an 11.8% improvement during October. Single-family starts increased 2.4% in November (16.7% y/y) to 938,000 after October's rise of 1.6%.
Starts in the South rose 10.3% (13.4% y/y) to 752,000, the highest level since March 2007. In the West, starts improved 1.4% (22.7% y/y) to 351,000, the highest level since September of last year. Moving lower last month were starts in the Midwest where they fell 15.5% (+9.7% y/y) to 158,000. They've been trending sideways since 2016. Starts in the Northeast declined 3.7% (-4.6% y/y) to 104,000, the lowest level since July.
A 1.4% increase (11.1% y/y) in building permits to 1.482 million brought them to the highest level since May 2007. Permits to build multi-family homes increased 2.5% to 564,000 (14.9% y/y) while single-family permits rose 0.8% to 918,000 (8.9% y/y).
The housing starts and permits figures can be found in Haver's USECON database. The expectations figure is contained in the AS1REPNA database.
Housing Starts (000s, SAAR) | Nov | Oct | Sep | Nov Y/Y % | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Total | 1,365 | 1,323 | 1,266 | 13.6 | 1,250 | 1,209 | 1,178 |
Single-Family | 938 | 916 | 902 | 16.7 | 873 | 852 | 786 |
Multi-Family | 427 | 407 | 364 | 7.3 | 377 | 357 | 392 |
Starts By Region | |||||||
Northeast | 104 | 108 | 114 | -4.6 | 111 | 111 | 116 |
Midwest | 158 | 187 | 158 | 9.7 | 171 | 181 | 185 |
South | 752 | 682 | 687 | 13.4 | 631 | 603 | 585 |
West | 351 | 346 | 307 | 22.7 | 337 | 314 | 292 |
Building Permits | 1,482 | 1,461 | 1,391 | 11.1 | 1,330 | 1,286 | 1,207 |