New Residential Building Permits Highest Since 2007

 | Jul 19, 2015 02:05AM ET

The U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development have now published their findings for June new residential building permits.

The latest reading of 1.343M was well above the Investing.com forecast of 1.150M and is the highest since August 2007, when there were 1.321M permits.

Here is the opening of Friday morning's monthly report:

Privately-owned housing units authorized by building permits in June were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1,343,000. This is 7.4 percent (±1.2%) above the revised May rate of 1,250,000 and is 30.0 percent (±2.3%) above the June 2014 estimate of 1,033,000.

Single-family authorizations in June were at a rate of 687,000; this is 0.9 percent (±1.1%)* above the revised May figure of 681,000. Authorizations of units in buildings with five units or more were at a rate of 621,000 in June. [link to report ]

Here is the complete historical series, which dates from 1960. Because of the extreme volatility of the monthly data points, a 6-month moving average has been included.