Building Permits and Single Family Starts at 5 Year Highs Despite Multi-Family Slump

The Department of Housing and UrbanrnDevelopment (HUD) and the Census Bureau said this morning that permits forrnresidential construction were issued at a seasonally adjusted annual rate ofrn925,000 units in January.  This was anrnincrease of 35.2 percent over the rate in January 2012 and was 1.8 percent higherrnthan the December rate of 909,000 which was revised upward in the report fromrn903,000</p

Single family building permits were issued at arnrate of 584,000 units, 1.9 percent higher than the 573,000 issued in Decemberrnand 29.2 percent higher than a year earlier.  Multi-family permits, (in buildings with fivernor more units) were issued at a seasonally adjusted rate of 311,000 unitsrncompared to 308,000 in December and 212,000 in January 2012. </p

Building Permits
</p

ChartManager.loadChart(‘permitschart’, ‘HousingPermitsChart’);

</p

Privately-owned housing starts in Januaryrnwere at a seasonally adjusted rate of 890,000, down from 973,000 in January,rnbut 23.6 percent higher than the January 2012 rate of 720,000.  The original figure reported for December wasrn954,000 units.</p

Single family housing starts were at arnrate of 613,000, up 0.8 percent from a downwardly revised December estimate ofrn608,000 and 20 percent higher than a year earlier.  Starts in buildings with five units or morernwere at a rate of 260,000 a 26.1 percent decrease from December.</p

Housing Starts</p

ChartManager.loadChart(‘housingchart’, ‘HousingChart’);

</p

Housing completions were at a seasonallyrnadjusted annual rate of 724,000, up 6.0 percent from the December estimate ofrn683,000 and 33.6 percent higher than the completion rate in January 2012 ofrn542,000.  Single family unit completionsrnwere at a rate of 565,000, up 7.0 percent from December and 43.4 percent from arnyear earlier.  Multifamily units wererncompleted at a rate of 152,000, up 3.4 percent from December’s rate of 147,000.</p

There was a backlog of 96,300 permitsrnfor which construction had not yet been started in January.  More than half of these, 48,600, were forrnunits in multi-family buildings and more than half of the unexecuted permitsrn(54,500) were located in the South.</p

There were 587,000 residential unitsrnunder construction at the end of the reporting period; 284,000 were singlernfamily units and 264,000 were in buildings with five or more units.</p

On a regional basis, permits were uprn10.1 percent month-over-month and 39.7 percent year-over-year in the Northeast butrnhousing starts decreased by 35.3 percent from December.  Starts were 1.4 percent higher than a yearrnearlier. </p

Permits in the Midwest rose 1.4 percentrnfrom December and were 41.6 percent higher than a year earlier.  Housing starts were down 50 percent comparedrnto December and down 10.4 percent from January 2012.</p

In the South there was an increase ofrn1.1 percent in permits issued compared to the previous month and startsrnincreased 4.1 percent.  Both permitsrnissued and housing starts were 19.9 percent above the rate one year earlier. </p

Permitting was down 0.5 percent fromrnDecember in the West but was 72.7 percent above the rate in January 2012.  Housing starts increased 16.7 percent fromrnDecember and 73.0 percent from the same period in 2012.

All Content Copyright © 2003 – 2009 Brown House Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved.nReproduction in any form without permission of MortgageNewsDaily.com is prohibited.