U.S. Housing Starts & Building Permits Rise Moderately in June
by:Tom Moeller
|in:Economy in Brief
Summary
- Multi-family starts surge while single-family declines.
- Starts are mixed m/m throughout the country.
- Building permits recover after falling to four-year low.
Total housing starts increased 3.0% (-4.4% y/y) to 1.353 million (SAAR) during June after falling 4.6% to 1.314 million in May, revised from 1.277 million. Starts rose 6.0% in April to 1.377 million, revised from 1.352 million. Starts remained 26.0% below the most recent peak of 1.828 million in April 2022. The Action Economics Forecast Survey expected 1.30 million starts in June.
A 19.6% (-23.1% y/y) rise in multi-family starts to 373,000 accounted for the total’s rise. It followed an 8.2% May decline to 312,000 and a 31.8% April increase to 340,000. They reached a high of 624,000 units in November 2022. Starts of single-family units fell 2.2% (+5.4% y/y) to 980,000 after declining 3.4% in May to 1.002 million. It was the fourth consecutive monthly decline. They reached a high of 1.286 units in December 2020.
Starts were mixed last month regionally. In the Northeast, the level of starts rose 34.4% (24.7 % y/y) to 121,000 units after declining 12.6% in May. Starts in the Midwest increased 26.8% (16.2% y/y) to 194,000 following a 15.9% May decline. Starts in the South weakened 1.7% (-10.0% y/y) to 732,000 after a 7.6% decline during May. Also moving lower, starts in the West fell 6.1% (-9.5% y/y) to 306,000 after rising 14.0% in May.
Building permits increased 3.4% (-3.1% y/y) in June to 1.446 million after falling 2.8% in May. Single-family permits weakened 2.3% (-1.3% y/y) to 934,000 in June after falling 2.1% in May. It was the fifth consecutive monthly decline. Multi-family permits rose 15.6% (-6.4% y/y) to 512,000, after falling in each of the prior three months.
The housing starts and permits figures can be found in Haver's USECON database. The expectations figure is contained in the AS1REPNA database.
Tom Moeller
AuthorMore in Author Profile »Prior to joining Haver Analytics in 2000, Mr. Moeller worked as the Economist at Chancellor Capital Management from 1985 to 1999. There, he developed comprehensive economic forecasts and interpreted economic data for equity and fixed income portfolio managers. Also at Chancellor, Mr. Moeller worked as an equity analyst and was responsible for researching and rating companies in the economically sensitive automobile and housing industries for investment in Chancellor’s equity portfolio. Prior to joining Chancellor, Mr. Moeller was an Economist at Citibank from 1979 to 1984. He also analyzed pricing behavior in the metals industry for the Council on Wage and Price Stability in Washington, D.C. In 1999, Mr. Moeller received the award for most accurate forecast from the Forecasters' Club of New York. From 1990 to 1992 he was President of the New York Association for Business Economists. Mr. Moeller earned an M.B.A. in Finance from Fordham University, where he graduated in 1987. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from George Washington University.
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