The Census Bureau reported this morning on the November Residential Construction survey, along with the delayed September and October housing starts survey.
Housing starts rose by 22.7% in November at an annualized seasonally adjusted rate. This is a striking increase, especially when we look at Single Family homes and compare Starts with Permits.
| U.S. Residential Construction: Housing Starts, Nationally Housing Units, Annualized Rate (Thousands) Seasonally Adjusted |
||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Structure Type | Monthly Level (SA) | Monthly % Change | Year/Year % Change | |||||||
| Nov. 2012 |
Sep. 2013 |
Oct. 2013 |
Nov. 2013 |
Sep. 2013 |
Oct. 2013 |
Nov. 2013 |
Sep. 2013 |
Oct. 2013 |
Nov. 2013 |
|
| All Types | 842 | 873 | 889 | 1,091 | -1.1 | 1.8 | 22.7 | 2.2 | 2.9 | 29.6 |
| Single Family Homes | 576 | 580 | 602 | 727 | -6.5 | 3.8 | 20.8 | -1.9 | 1.2 | 26.2 |
| Multi-Unit Buildings | 266 | 293 | 287 | 364 | 11.4 | -2.0 | 26.8 | 11.4 | 6.7 | 36.8 |
See the Residential Construction Dataset Page for more details.
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Starts usually track Permit activity for single family homes. Here we see a large divergence.
Looking across regions, we see this same pattern of a spike in single-family homes vs permits happening in all but the North East. Reversible pikes have happened in the past but not simultaneously across three regions.
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The charts below show the distribution of changes across building size and region for Permits and Starts. Note the subdued Permit authorizations in the past four months for Single Family homes. Note also that the national Permit rate continues to be dominated by the volatile rate for apartment buildings in the South region.
