Courtesy of ZeroHedge View original post here.
Following the dramatic surge in Housing Starts and Permits in August, expectations were for a notable drop/reversion in September and both dropped significantly.
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Housing Starts -9.4% MoM (+15.1% prior, -3.2% exp)
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Building Permits -2.7% MoM (+8.2% prior, -5.3% exp)
Extremely noisy…
Source: Bloomberg
Year-over-year, both starts and permits saw growth slowdown with starts plunging from +8.4% to just +1.6% YoY…
Source: Bloomberg
The drop in starts was driven by a plunge in multifamily starts from 456K SAAR in August to 327K in Sept.
But the multifamily series has become extremely volatile…
Starts decreased across all four national regions, led by a 34.3% slump in the Northeast.
Groundbreakings for single-family properties grew at the fastest pace since January. That gain was offset by a 28.2% drop in new construction of apartment buildings and condominiums, a category that tends to be volatile.
The report reflects some cooling as starts pull back from the best pace since 2007 the prior month.