April Housing Starts Kept Lower By Northeast & West Regions

The Commerce Department has reported that Housing Starts for the month of April are up by 2.6% to 717,000 on an annualized basis.  The gains seem high, but the Dow Jones consensus was for Housing Starts to be up by some 4.7%.  The reading for March was also revised higher or less bad to -2.6% from -5.8% initially reported.

April’s single-family housing starts rose by 2.3%, while multi-family homes rose by some 3.2% in April.

The trick part of the equation is Building Permits, which fell by 7.0% to an annualized level of 715,000 in April.  That figure was 769,000 in the month of March.

The Northeast was a drag as starts were down just over 20%, followed by just over an 8% drop in the West.  The South led starts with a gain of more than 11% and the Midwest grew by almost 7%.

JON C. OGG