Content about Housing starts

Thursday's housing reports produced a variety of negative headlines. For instance: "U.S. Home Construction has worst year ever," wrote the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation; and "December ends third poor year for home building," wrote the Chicago Sun-Times.

Analysts were expecting a boost in November's residential construction data, but not this much of a boost.

The Commerce Department's residential construction report released Tuesday morning showed housing starts at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 685,000 -- that's 9.3% higher than the revised October estimate of 627,000 (revised from a previously released figure of 628,000). It's also the highest level of starts since April 2010. 

Compared with last year's near-record low, total housing starts were up 24.3%.

September housing starts showed double-digit increases compared with both last year and last month, according to data released this morning by the U.S. Department of Commerce.

Housing starts came in at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 658,000, up 15% from the August rate of 572,000, and up 10.2% compared with September 2010.

The figure of 658,000 was the highest total housing-starts figure since April 2010, when starts stood at 687,000.

Compared with June's housing start report, there is less to cheer about in the Tuesday morning release from the Department of Commerce and U.S. Census Bureau.

The seasonally adjusted annual rate of housing starts slipped to 604,000 in July. But that's still up 9.8% from the July 2010 rate of 550,000. Another possible positive indicator: June and July marked the first two-month stretch of a pace higher than 600,000 since March and April of 2010.

Nationwide housing starts rose 14.6% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 629,000 units in June, according to the latest residential construction report from the U.S. Commerce Department. This was the highest pace of housing production since the beginning of the year, and was attributable to significant gains registered in both the single-family and multi-family segments, as well as every region of the country.

With seemingly nowhere to go but up, housing starts in May increased 3.5% from the upwardly revised April figure to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 560,000. Single-family starts increased 3.7% to a rate of 419,000.

The figures had easy comparisons from a month ago, when the Commerce Department's New Residential Construction report posted depressing numbers. While the month-to-month gains are a welcome sign for the industry, year-over-year statistics are negative -- total starts were down 3.4%, and single-family starts were down 8.9%.

The Department of Commerce's residential construction report released today shows both total starts and single-family starts for March are up over February, but way down compared with March 2010.

March housing starts were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 549,000, up 7.2% from February, but down 13.4% from the same month last year.

Single-family starts were reported at a pace of 422,000, up 7.7% compared with February, but down 21.1% compared with March 2010.

Residential construction showed a rebound in January as housing starts improved to a pace of 596,000 -- a 14.6% increase over the downwardly revised December pace of 520,000.

Compared with a year ago, total starts are down 2.6%, according to the Department of Commerce residential construction report released Wednesday.

Still, single-family starts showed a 1.0% decline to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 413,000.

The single-family pace is the lowest since May 2009.

After a disturbingly disappointing residential construction tally for October, the Department of Commerce's housing start report for November saw an uptick in activity, but not nearly enough to celebrate.