Homebuilding: June Housing Starts and Permits

The US homebuilding shows slight changes in June. House builders seem to have reacted to the improvements of market conditions. June nationwide housing starts showed a 3.6% increase to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 582,000 and permit issuance rose 8.7% to 563,000.

According to the U.S. Commerce Department more and more house builders undertake building single family houses. Single family housing starts were reported to increase by 14.4% to seasonally adjusted annual rate of 470,000 units and single-family permits showed a 5.9% gain to 430,000 units.

However, after previous month’s huge gain multifamily starts declined by 25.8% in June to 112,000 units. At the same time multifamily building permits rose 18.8% to 133,000 units.

The Northeast region of the country was reported to show 28.6% increase in housing starts and 5.4 % in permits.

The Midwest homebuilding rose 33.3% in starts and 3.4% in housing permits.

The South declined by 1.4 % in housing starts but increased by 14% percent in permits issuance.

The West got 14.8% decrease in starts and a 2% gain in housing permits.

In spite of evident gains both in housing starts and permit issue “… there is still much concern about the difficulty of financing new-home production and counting weakness in the job market”, said the Chairman of the National Association of Home Builders, Joe Robson

November 08, 2009