Residential construction data for March didn’t come close to matching February’s performance, but the rate of housing starts held its own. The good news was an uptick in single-family numbers. The U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development reported that permits for residential construction were issued at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.413 million units. This was a decline of 8.8 percent from the prior month and 24.8 percent below the pace the previous March . The 13.8 percent surge in February permitting more than held, revised up to 1.550 million from 1.524 million annual units. Single-family permits, at a rate of 818,000 units, represented an increase of 4.1 percent from February while remaining down 29.7 percent year-over-year. Multifamily permits fell by 24.3 percent and 17.7 percent from those in the two earlier periods, Residential construction starts were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.420 million units, a -0.8 percent change from February’s revised (from 1.450 million) rate of 1.432 million units. Starts lagged the same month in 2022 by 17.2 percent. Again, the encouraging news was in single-family production. Those starts rose 2.7 percent to a rate of 861,000 units while multifamily starts backed off by 6.7 percent. Single-family starts are down 27.7 percent and multifamily 6.1 percent compared to a year earlier. Robert Dietz, chief economist for the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) said the improvement in single-family building was the result “of a gradual upturn in March as stabilizing mortgage rates and limited existing inventory helped to offset stubbornly high construction costs, building labor shortages and tightening credit conditions. This is reflected in the slight uptick in builder sentiment in April.” As was reported here yesterday, NAHB’s index reflecting that sentiment rose a point to 42 this month.
