Housing starts and completions fell more than expected but permits were up to start the year, according to the Census Bureau’s monthly new residential construction report for January….(Census Bureau)
- M-O-M: Privately-owned housing starts fell 4.1% from December to an annualized rate of 1.638M. Economists had projected a smaller drop to 1.7M.
- Y-O-Y: Housing starts were up 0.8% when compares to January 2021.
Housing completions were even worse than starts in January…
- M-O-M: Privately-owned housing completions fell 5.2% from December to an annualized rate of 1.31M.
- Y-O-Y: Housing completions were also down for the year with a 6.2% drop compared to January 2021.
Building permits were the only bright spot in the month’s report…
- M-O-M: Privately-owned housing units authorized by building permits were up 0.7% from December to an annualized rate of 1.889M. Economists had actually projected a decline to 1.76M.
- Y-O-Y: Building permits were up 0.8% year-over-year.
Looking at the all-important single-family category appeared to be an exaggeration of each metric…
- Single-family housing starts fell 5.6% from December and were down 2.4% year-over-year.
- Single-family completions fell 7.3% from December and were down 8.4% year-over-year.
- Single-family permits jumped 6.8% from December but were down 5.0% year-over-year.
