Housing Starts Slide Again in January

The U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development reported Wednesday morning that new housing starts in January fell to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.099 million. That was a decrease of 3.8% from the downwardly revised December rate of 1.143 million and an increase of 1.8% compared with the January 2015 rate of 1.08 million. The consensus estimate from a survey of economists expected a rate of around 1.175 million.

The revision to the December rate dropped 6,000 new housing starts to the previously reported total.

The seasonally adjusted rate of new building permits also slipped in January to 1.202 million, down 0.2% from the downwardly revised December rate of 1.204 million and 13.5% above the January 2015 rate of 1.059 million. The consensus estimate called for 1.224 million new building permits.

Single-family housing starts fell to an annualized rate of 731,000 in January, down 3.9% from the revised December rate of 761,000. Single-family starts rose 1.8% year over year in January.
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Permits for new single-family homes fell 1.6% month over month in January, to an adjusted annual rate of 720,000, from a revised total of 732,000 in December.

Multifamily starts, for buildings with five or more units, a more volatile number than single-family starts, fell by 3.8% year over year in January and by 2.5% compared with December.