New Housing Starts Higher in June, Building Permits 5.3% Lower

RJS, MarketWatch 666, New Housing Starts Reported Higher in June, Building Permits 5.3% Lower

The June report on New Residential Construction (pdf) from the Census Bureau estimated that new housing units were being started at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1,643,000 in June, which was 6.3 percent (±11.5 percent)* above the revised May estimated annual rate of 1,546000 units started, and was 29.1 percent (±11.2 percent) above last June’s pace of 1,235,000 housing starts a year…the asterisk indicates that the Census does not have sufficient data to determine whether housing starts actually rose or fell from May, with the figure in parenthesis the most likely range of the change indicated; in other words, June’s housing starts could have been down by 5.2% or up by as much as 17.8% from those of May, with revisions outside of that range eventually possible…with this report, the annual rate for May housing starts was revised from the 1,572,000 units reported last month to 1,546,000, while April starts, which were first reported at a 1,569,000 annual rate, were revised from last month’s initial revised annual figure of 1,517,000 annually down to 1,514,000 annually with this report…

The annual rates of housing starts reported here were extrapolated from a survey of a small percentage of US building permit offices visited by Census field agents, which estimated that 152,600 housing units were started in June, up from the 140,400 units started in May and up from the 118,800 units started in June of a year ago…of those housing units started in June, an estimated 111,100 were single family homes and 40,800 were units in structures with more than 5 units, up from the revised 99,800 single family starts in May, and up from the the 39,600 units started in structures with more than 5 units in May..

The monthly data on new building permits, with a smaller margin of error, are probably a better monthly indicator of new housing construction trends than the volatile and broadly revised housing starts data…in June, Census estimated new building permits were being issued for a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1,598,000 housing units, which was 5.1 percent (±1.1 percent) below the revised May rate of 1,683,000 permits, but was 23.3 percent (±0.9 percent) above the rate of building permit issuance in June a year earlier…the annual rate of housing permits issued in May was revised from the 1,681,000 reported last month to 1,683,000….

Again, the annualized estimates for new permits reported here were extrapolated from the unadjusted estimates collected by canvassing census agents, which showed permits for 155,000 housing units were issued in June, up from the revised estimate of 142,300 new permits issued in May…the June permits included 104,900 permits for single family homes, up from 142,300 in May, and 45,200 permits for housing units in apartment buildings with 5 or more units, up from 38,500 such multifamily permits a month earlier… for graphs and commentary on this report, see the following two posts by Bill McBride at Calculated Risk: Housing Starts increased to 1.643 Million Annual Rate in June and Comments on June Housing Starts…