• Starts rebound after harsh winter weather limited building activity.

• Single-family & multi-family starts rise sharply.

• Building permits increase moderately.

Better weather and low interest rates boosted housing last month. Housing starts jumped 19.4% (37.0% y/y) during March to 1.739 million units (SAAR) after falling 11.3% in February to 1.457 million, revised from 1.421 million. Starts in January eased 1.7% to 1.642 million, revised from 1.584 million. The Action Economics Forecast Survey expected 1.610 million starts in March.

Starts of single-family homes jumped 15.3% in March (40.7% y/y) to 1.238 million from 1.074 million in February, revised from 1.040 million. Starts of multi-family units surged 30.8% last month (28.8% y/y) to 501,000 from 383,000, revised from 381,000.

Building permits improved 2.7% (30.2% y/y) to 1.766 million from 1.720 million in February, revised from 1.682 million. That reversed part of the February decline. Permits to build single-family homes rose 4.6% (33.6% y/y) to 1.199 million after falling 9.8% in February. Permits to build multi-family homes eased 1.2% (+20.1% y/y) to 567,000 after a 6.8% February decline.

By region, housing starts in the Northeast jumped by roughly two-thirds and more than doubled y/y to 182,000 after falling 46.1% in February. In the Midwest, starts surged 122.8% (87.0% y/y) to 303,000, the highest level since February 2006. Housing starts in the South rose 13.5% (24.0% y/y) to 874,000 following February's 6.2% decline. In the West, starts fell 13.6% (+19.5% y/y) to 380,000 after rising 8.9% during February.

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