Housing Starts Down 4.0 Percent, Single Family Starts Down 6.9 Percent

In December, housing starts fell back 4.0 percent to an annualized pace of 557,000 after surging upward 10.7 percent in November. Single family starts fell 6.9 percent while the more volatile multi-family starts rose 12.2 percent. The decline in starts was driven by the Northeast and Midwest. Despite the decline, from a year prior total starts were up 0.2 percent. This was the first-year-over-year increase since early 2006.

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Audio of the press conference for last week’s ABA Economic Advisory Committee meeting is now available online. It can be found here. The press release is available here. The committee’s semi-annual economic forecast is available here (pdf).