Private Residential Construction Sole Bright Spot in Census Report

Overall construction spending inrnDecember was flat compared to November, rising a scant 0.1 percent.  Private spending on residential construction,rnprimarily single-family housing, was the sole bright spot in Monday’s U.S. CensusrnBureau report. </p

Total public and private constructionrnspending in December was at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $930.49rnbillion compared to $929.93 billion in November.  This was a 5.3 percent improvement over thernannual rate of $883.55 in December 2012.   Of that spending, $357.42 billion wasrnresidential spending, an increase of 2.4 percent from November and 17.5 percentrnfrom a year earlier.</p

Private residential constructionrnspending was at an annual rate of $352.61 billion, over half of all of thern$663.93 billion of private construction put in place in December on anrnannualized basis.  Of that residentialrnspending, $181.74 billion was for new single-family and $35.62 billion was new multi-familyrnconstruction.   Single-family construction was up 3.4 percentrnfrom $175.73 billion in November and 21.6 percent higher than the $149.40 billionrnspent in December 2013.  Multifamilyrnconstruction spending improved 0.5 percent on a monthly basis from $35.43rnbillion and 27.3 percent from $27.97 billion a year earlier.</p

Publicly funded construction continuedrnto decline with total expenditures of $266.56 billion on a seasonally adjustedrnannual basis, down 2.3 percent month over month and 0.7 percent annually.  The December rates of spending fell further forrnthe residential construction category than any of the Census categories, downrn11.5 percent from November, and dropped 20.2 percent on an annual basis. </p

On a non-seasonally adjusted basis residentialrnspending during the month was $25.75 billion compared to 28.37 billion inrnNovember and $21.57 billion a year earlier.  All but $385 million of the Decemberrnresidential spending came from the private sector.

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