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ECONOMIC REPORT Housing starts rise 6.7% in November Building permits fall to 9-year low with 10th straight decline By Rex Nutting, MarketWatch Last Update: 8:31 AM ET Dec 19, 2006 WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) - Construction on new homes rebounded in November, rising 6.7% after a whopping 14% drop in October, the Commerce Department reported Tuesday. Building permits, meanwhile, fell 3% to a fresh nine-year low, signaling that the housing market remains very weak. Starts rose 6.7% in November to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.588 million from October's revised 1.488 million pace. Starts are down 25.5% in the past year and are down 12.5% in the first 11 months of 2006 compared with the same period in 2005. Building permits, considered a leading indicator of the economy and of the housing market, fell 3% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.506 million, the 10th straight decline in permits, from October's 1.553 million pace. Building permits are down 31.3% in the past year and are down 14.1% in the first 11 months of 2006 compared with the same period in 2005. The pace of starts in November was above the expected 1.54 million, while permits fell short of the 1.55 million expected by economists polled by MarketWatch. Completions of new homes were flat at a 1.915 million annual pace, indicating that a significant supply of homes is still entering the market. Starts of single-family homes increased 8.1% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.281 million after a 15% drop in October. Permits of single-family homes fell 3.1% to a 1.144 million pace, also the lowest since December 1997. The National Association of Home Builders reported on Monday that its survey of builder sentiment fell in December after two months of small gains. Builders' outlook for future sales improved, while buyer traffic evaporated. Builders said they saw signs of a turning point in the improved outlook. See full story. The government's housing data are subject to large sampling and other statistical errors. It can take five months for a new trend in housing starts to emerge from the data. The standard error is so high, in fact, that the government is not confident that starts increased at all in November. Starts in September and October were revised lower by a cumulative 14,000 annualized In the past five months, housing starts have averaged 1.64 million annualized, down from 1.69 million in the five months ending in October and 2.12 million in January. Regionally, starts rose 8.6% in the Northeast and rose 18.5% in the South. Starts fell 6.3% in the Midwest to the lowest level in 15 years. Starts fell 8.1% in the West to the lowest level in five years. Rex Nutting is Washington bureau chief of MarketWatch. http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/housing-starts-rise-67… |
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| Autor (Datum des Eintrages): | nachtschatten (19.12.06 14:46:05) |
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