New-home building declined more than projected in October, led by a slump in apartment construction and showing fitful progress in residential real estate.
Residential starts dropped 11 percent to a 1.06 million annualized rate, the slowest since March, from a revised 1.19 million pace the prior month, a Commerce Department report showed Wednesday. The median forecast in a Bloomberg survey called for 1.16 million. The most construction permits for single-family homes since 2007 indicates ground-breaking will rebound in coming months.
Permits, a proxy of future construction, increased 4.1 percent to a 1.15 million annualized rate. They were led by an increase in applications for single-family homes, which climbed to a 711,000 pace, the strongest since December 2007.
The drop in starts last month was primarily due to a 25.1 percent slump in work on multifamily homes, the biggest drop since August 2014. Data on these projects, which have led housing starts in recent years, tend to be volatile.
This post was published at Newsmax
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