The U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development reported Tuesday morning that new housing starts in February slipped to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 897,000. That was a decrease of 17% from the upwardly revised January rate of 1.081 million and a decrease of 3.3% compared with the February 2014 rate of 928,000. The consensus estimate from a survey of economists expected a rate of around 1.048 million.

The revision to the January rate totaled 16,000 more new housing starts. Even factoring in the revised total, February’s outcome was unexpected and unexpectedly poor.

The seasonally adjusted rate of new building permits rose in February to 1.092 million, up 3.0% from the upwardly revised January rate of 1.060 million and 7.7% above the January 2014 rate of 1.014 million. The consensus estimate called for 1.058 million new permits.

Single-family housing starts fell to an annualized rate of 593,000 in February, down 14.9% from the upwardly revised January rate of 697,000.

Permits for new single-family homes fell 6.2% in February, to an adjusted annual rate of 620,000, from an upwardly revised total of 661,000 in January.

Multifamily starts for buildings with five or more units, a more volatile number than single-family starts, rose 12.5% year-over-year in February and rose 19.9% compared with January.

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