U.S. Housing Starts Fell, Permits Rose in August
September 19 2017 - 9:00AM
Dow Jones News
By Ben Leubsdorf and Sarah Chaney
WASHINGTON--U.S. housing starts slipped again in August, but
building permits rebounded.
Housing starts decreased 0.8% from the prior month to a
seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.18 million in August, the
Commerce Department said Tuesday.
Residential building permits, which typically lead starts by a
month or two, rose 5.7% to a 1.30 million annual rate last
month.
Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal had expected
starts at a 1.18 million annual pace and permits at a 1.22 million
annual rate in August.
Both starts and permits fell in July, but revisions in Tuesday's
report showed the declines weren't as steep as earlier
estimated.
Starts rose 1.6% in August for single-family homes and fell 6.5%
for buildings with two or more units. Permits fell 1.5% for
single-family houses and jumped 19.6% last month for apartment
buildings and other multifamily buildings.
Monthly data on housing starts tend to be volatile and
imprecise; August's 0.8% loss came with a margin of error of 9.6
percentage points. The 5.7% rise for permits had a 2.0-point margin
of error.
More broadly, starts were up 2.7% in the first eight months of
2017 compared with the same period a year earlier. Permits rose
7.5% from the first eight months of 2016.
Limited supply and fast-rising prices have pressured many
would-be home buyers this year, despite mortgage rates that moved
lower during the spring and summer. In July, purchases of
previously owned homes and newly built single-family homes both
fell from the prior month.
Hurricane Harvey hit the Gulf Coast in late August, followed by
Hurricane Irma striking Florida in early September. The storms have
started to scramble U.S. economic indicators, pushing up jobless
claims in recent weeks and depressing industrial production during
August, and home-construction data could be clouded for several
months.
The Commerce Department said Tuesday that hurricane-affected
counties in Florida and Texas accounted for about 13% of total U.S.
building permits last year.
Granger MacDonald, chairman of the National Association of Home
Builders, said Monday that builder confidence dimmed this month as
"recent hurricanes have intensified our members' concerns about the
availability of labor and the cost of building materials."
Economic forecasters expect the storms will cause weaker growth
in the short run, but activity should pick up in subsequent
quarters as rebuilding efforts gain traction.
The Commerce Department's latest report on housing starts and
building permits can be accessed at:
https://www.census.gov/construction/nrc/pdf/newresconst.pdf
Write to Ben Leubsdorf at ben.leubsdorf@wsj.com and Sarah Chaney
at sarah.chaney@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
September 19, 2017 08:45 ET (12:45 GMT)
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