New Residential Building Permits: July Slips
Jill Mislinski | Aug 16, 2017 09:14AM ET
The U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development have now published their findings for July new residential building permits. The latest reading of 1.223M was a decrease from a revised 1.275M in June and below the Investing.com forecast of 1.250M.
Here is the opening of this morning's monthly report:
Building Permits
Privately-owned housing units authorized by building permits in July were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1,223,000. This is 4.1 percent (±0.9 percent) below the revised June rate of 1,275,000, but is 4.1 percent (±1.8 percent) above the July 2016 rate of 1,175,000. Single-family authorizations in July were at a rate of 811,000; this is unchanged from the revised June figure of 811,000. Authorizations of units in buildings with five units or more were at a rate of 377,000 in July.
Housing Starts
Privately-owned housing starts in July were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1,155,000. This is 4.8 percent (±10.2 percent)* below the revised June estimate of 1,213,000 and is 5.6 percent (±8.5 percent)* below the July 2016 rate of 1,223,000. Single-family housing starts in July were at a rate of 856,000; this is 0.5 percent (±8.5 percent)* below the revised June figure of 860,000. The July rate for units in buildings with five units or more was 287,000. [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.
Here is the data with a simple population adjustment. The Census Bureau's mid-month population estimates show substantial growth in the US population since 1960. Here is a chart of housing starts as a percent of the population. We've added a linear regression through the monthly data to highlight the trend.
A Footnote on Volatility
The extreme volatility of this monthly indicator is the rationale for paying more attention to its 6-month moving average than to its noisy monthly change. Over the complete data series, the absolute MoM average percent change is 4.4%. The MoM range minimum is -24.0% and the maximum is 33.9%.
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For visual confirmation of the volatility, here is a snapshot of the monthly percent change since 1990.
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