Housing starts continue to plod along
Total housing starts continued a trend of weakness in April, the 11th consecutive month of year-over-year declines for the closely watched industry metric.
The residential construction report released Wednesday morning by the U.S. Census Bureau showed the seasonally adjusted annual rate of housing starts in April stood at 1.401 million, down 22.3 percent from April 2022.
On a month-to-month basis, April starts were up 2.2 percent compared to a downwardly revised March figure.
Single-family starts in April were at a rate of 846,000, up 1.6 percent from the revised March figure of 833,000.
On a regional basis, some of the bigger numbers that jump out from the monthly residential construction report include:
• In the West region, single-family starts were up 59.5 percent from March 2023.
• In the Midwest region, single-family starts were down 42.6 percent from a year ago.
• In the South region, single-family starts were down 27.6 percent from a year ago.
• In the Northeast region, total starts were down 23.4 percent in April, compared to March.
More regional data, as well as percentage changes of building-permit activity by region, can be viewed in the interactive map above.
