Housing Starts Fall 3.7% MoM in November

Housing remains under pressure as new permits fell -1.5% MoM, to a new14-year low, and actual starts fell 3.7% MoM, to annual rate of 1.187million new homes a year. A reduction in new home supply will helppare down current bloated inventories. Housing starts peaked inJanuary 2006, and are now running at half the pace they were then.
Single-family home starts continue to experience the brunt of thedecline, falling 5.4% MoM, to the slowest pace since 1991.Multi-family construction, which includes townhouses, condos andapartments, rose +.6% MoM, for the second consecutive monthlyincrease. Over the past year, single-family starts have fallen -34.9%YoY while multi-family starts have risen +22.6% YoY.
The South was the only region to see an increase in starts, up 0.3%MoM. The Northeast saw the biggest drop at -16% MoM, followed by theWest at -6.9% MoM and then the Midwest at -1.5% MoM. Year-over-year,the West and South have shown the largest declines in new home starts at around 27% each. In contrast, the Midwest and Northeast are closerto an average 14% annual decline.
Housing completed fell -4.1% MoM and is down -28.7% YoY, evenlydistributed between single and multi-family construction. Housingcurrently under construction fell -0.9% MoM, and is down -13.6% YoY.Single-family houses under construction has fallen -22.6% YoY whilemulti-family structures currently under construction has risen 2.9%YoY.
See attached graph of housing starts going back to 1990.