U.S. Housing Starts Fell in September
19 October 2017 - 12:00AM
Dow Jones News
By Sarah Chaney and Sharon Nunn
U.S. housing starts decreased last month for the fifth time in
six months, a sign home builders are struggling to keep pace with
solid buyer demand.
Housing starts fell 4.7% in September from the prior month to a
seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.127 million, the Commerce
Department said Wednesday. Residential building permits, which can
signal how much construction is in the pipeline, fell 4.5% to an
annual pace of 1.215 million last month. Economists surveyed by The
Wall Street Journal had expected a 0.8% decrease for starts, while
estimating that permits fell 5.4%.
The Commerce Department said responses in August for building
permit activity were "not significantly lower than normal" in the
areas impacted by Hurricanes Harvey and Irma.
Housing-starts data are volatile from month to month and can be
subject to large revisions. Looking beyond monthly volatility,
starts in the first nine months of the year were up 3.1% from the
same period in 2016. Permits during this period increased 5% from a
year earlier.
New residential construction reached a postrecession high in
October 2016, but has eased slightly since and remains well below
levels reached in the years preceding the 2008 financial
crisis.
Starts fell in September for single-family construction and
decreased for multifamily construction. Permits last month were up
for single-family homes but down for buildings with more than 2
units.
The National Association of Home Builders on Tuesday said its
index that measures confidence in the market for new single-family
homes rose to 68 in October from 64 in September, slightly below
the postrecession peak touched in March.
"This month's report shows that home builders are rebounding
from the initial shock of the hurricanes," said Home Builders
Chairman Granger MacDonald, a home builder and developer from
Kerrville, Texas. "However, builders need to be mindful of
long-term repercussions from the storms, such as intensified
material price increases and labor shortages."
The Commerce report can be found at
http://www.census.gov/construction/nrc/pdf/newresconst.pdf
Write to Sarah Chaney at sarah.chaney@wsj.com and Sharon Nunn at
sharon.nunn@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
October 18, 2017 08:45 ET (12:45 GMT)
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