A month after tumbling to their lowest point in nearly two years and suffering the largest month-to-month tumble since 1984, housing starts rebounded 7.2 percent in March, according to data from the U.S. Department of Commerce. The seasonally adjusted annual rate is now 549,000 units. Still, the latest figures are down 13.4 percent from the March 2010 annual rate of 634,000 units.
"While the overall rate of new-home production remains quite low and is still being weighed down by significant uncertainties among both home builders and buyers, this latest report is encouraging," said Bob Nielsen, chairman of the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB). "It means that some builders are cautiously beginning to re-stock their extremely thin inventories of new homes in anticipation of gradual improvement in consumer demand as the economy slowly inches toward recovery."
