April Housing Starts Jump 6.6%

The U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development reported Tuesday morning that new housing starts in April jumped to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.172 million, an increase of 6.6% from the upwardly revised February rate of 1.099 million and a decrease of 1.7% compared with the April 2015 rate of 1.192 million. The consensus estimate from a survey of economists expected a rate of around 1.135 million.

The revision to the March rate added 10,000 new housing starts to the previously reported total.

The seasonally adjusted rate of new building permits also rose in March to 1.116 million, up 3.6% from the downwardly revised March rate of 1.077 million and 5.3% below the April 2015 rate of 1.178 million. The consensus estimate called for 1.13 million new building permits.

Single-family housing starts rose to an annualized rate of 778,000 in April, up 3.3% from the revised March rate of 753,000. Single-family starts rose nearly 4.33% year over year in April.

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Permits for new single-family homes rose 1.5% month over month in April, to an adjusted annual rate of 736,000, from a revised total of 725,000 in March.

Multi-family starts for buildings with five or more units fell by 12.9% year over year in April and by rose by 10.7% compared with March.