The national new construction report was released last week and here is what I saw—· Housing starts dropped by 1% in March to an annualized pace of 1.42 million units which is down 17% from last year.
· Single-family starts rose almost 3% last month at a pace of 861k new units annually. Still single-family starts are down a whopping 28% from last year. Can’t fix the housing supply crisis this way. Dear Federal Reserve: do you understand this?
· Housing permits which are counted earlier dropped by 9% last month to an annualized pace of 1.41 million units and are down 25% from a year ago.
· Single-family permits were up 4% last month, but are down 30% from a year ago.
· A total of 1.542 million housing units were completed in March, down 0.6% from February and up 12.9% from a year ago. Completions are higher now due to fewer supply shortages than a year ago.