While the nation’s home builders wrapped up construction on new homes at a faster pace in January, upcoming activity is poised for a decline thanks to a slowdown in single family.
Home builders broke ground on privately-owned properties at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1,065,000 last month, slipping from an upwardly revised rate of 1,087,000 in December.
Still, activity picked up from January 2014, when the rate of housing starts was an upwardly revised 897,000.
The
data were included in a report jointly issued Wednesday by the Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
January’s single-family housing starts fell 7 percent from a month earlier to a 678,000 annual rate, while multifamily starts climbed 12 percent to a rate of 381,000.
But the rate of housing completions increased to 930,000 during the first month of this year from a revised rate of 918,000 in the final month of last year. It was also up from January 2014’s revised rate of 850,000.
Although single-family completions
were down 2 percent from December to an annual rate of 649,000, the rate for multifamily completions jumped 11 percent to 274,000.
The Census Bureau’s
data on building permits indicates a modest slowdown.
As of January, the seasonally adjusted annual rate of building permits was 1,053,000.
The pace of permits retreated from the previous month’s upwardly revised 1,060,000 rate but was up compared to the downwardly revised 974,000 rate in the first month of 2014.
Single-family permits fell 3 percent from December to an annual rate of 654,000, while multifamily permits rose 3 percent to a rate of 372,000 in January.
