Housing Starts Slip in December

The U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development reported Tuesday morning that new housing starts in December slipped to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.149 million, a decrease of 2.5% from the upwardly revised November rate of 1.179 million and an increase of 6.4% compared with the December 2014 rate of 1.080 million. The consensus estimate from a survey of economists expected a rate of around 1.2 million.

The revision to the November rate added 6,000 new housing starts to the previously reported total.

The seasonally adjusted rate of new building permits also slipped in December to 1.232 million, down 3.9% from the downwardly revised November rate of 1.282 million and 14.4% above the December 2014 rate of 1.077 million. The consensus estimate called for 1.217 million new building permits.

Single-family housing starts fell to an annualized rate of 768,000 in December, down 3.3% from the revised November rate of 794,000. Single-family starts rose 15.5% year over year in December.
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Permits for new single-family homes rose 1.8% month over month in December, to an adjusted annual rate of 740,000, from a revised total of 727,000 in November.

Multifamily starts for buildings with five or more units, a more volatile number than single-family starts, rose by 39.7% year over year in December and rose by 5.2% compared with November.