The annual pace of building permits rose last month, but multifamily activity dragged down housing starts. The West overcame a national slump in completed construction.
In places where building permits are issued, there were
107,600 U.S. permits handed out for the construction of new privately owned housing units during September.
The number of permits dipped from a month prior, when there were an upwardly revised 108,400. But permits rose from an upwardly revised 98,300 issued a year prior.
During the first-nine months of 2016, there have been 889,900 permits issued, according to
the Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which jointly released the statistics on Wednesday.
Applying seasonal adjustments, housing permits were issued at an annual rate of 1.225 million last month, rising from the
upwardly revised rate of 1.152 million in August. The rate was an upwardly revised 1.129 million in September 2015.
The annual rate in the Northeast was 131,000 during September, soaring from the last report by 24 percent — more than any other region. A 16 percent increase left the rate at 316,000 in the West, while the South’s rate rose 3 percent to 594,000.
But a 5 percent decline from August in the Midwest left the seasonally adjusted annual rate there at 184,000.
September’s seasonally adjusted U.S. annual rate of permits on just one-unit properties inched up less than a percent
from the prior month to 739,000. On multifamily housing, the rate jumped 17 percent to 449,000.
Last month’s new permit activity left a seasonally adjusted 138,000 housing units authorized but not started. The inventory increased 6 percent from a month earlier and 2 percent from a year earlier.
The Census Bureau reported that
housing units were started at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.047 million in the latest month. The rate declined 9 percent from August and tumbled 12 percent from September of last year.
The National Association of Home Builders issued a statement attributing the the decline in housing starts to a sharp decline in multifamily production.
“After strong readings during the summer, multifamily production pulled back in September,” NAHB Chief Economist Robert Dietz said in the statement.
But NAHB Chairman Ed Brady noted,
“Single-family starts posted their highest level since February and are consistent with builder sentiment, which has remained firm in recent months.”
Housing start activity left a seasonally adjusted 1.038 million housing units under construction as of Sept. 30. The inventory was mostly unchanged from a month earlier
but up 11 percent from a year earlier.
Home builders completed 86,600 U.S. housing units last month. That was fewer than the 98,300 units completed in August and the downwardly revised 92,600 units completed in September 2015.
Year-to-date completed construction amounted to
756,000 units.
Applying adjustments for seasonal factors,
the annual rate of completed construction declined to 951,000 from a downwardly revised 1.038 million in August and a downwardly revised 1.010 million in September 2015.
The pace of completed construction sank by more than a quarter from August in the Northeast to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 92,000. A 24 percent decline in the Midwest left the rate there at 115,000, while the South was down 7 percent to a 505,000 rate.
But in the West, the annual rate of construction climbed 10 percent on a month-over-month basis to 239,000.
The U.S. annual rate of completed construction for one-unit properties declined 9 percent from August to a seasonally adjusted 687,000, while the multifamily rate fell 10 percent to 250,000 in September.
