Privately owned housing starts hit a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 717,000 in April, which is 2.6 percent above the revised March estimate of 699,000 and 29.9 percent above the revised rate from April 2011, when starts reached 552,000, according to a report from the U.S. Department of Commerce released today.
Privately owned housing starts hit a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 717,000 in April, which is 2.6 percent above the revised March estimate of 699,000 and 29.9 percent above the revised rate from April 2011, when starts reached 552,000, according to a report from the U.S. Department of Commerce released today.
Single-family starts reached a rate of 492,000 in April, 2.3 percent higher than the March rate of 481,000 and 18.8 percent higher than the rate of 414,000 reached in April 2011.
"April's increase in housing production comes on top of strong upward revisions to the previous month's data, and is an encouraging sign that we are returning to a gradual, upward trend that should continue in the year ahead as builders respond to improving demand for new homes in certain markets," said Barry Rutenberg, chairman of the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) and a home builder from Gainesville, Fla. "Unfortunately, overly restrictive lending conditions for builders and buyers are slowing the pace of this trend considerably."
"While still less than half the pace of what we would expect in a fully healthy market, the rate of housing production in April was very solid for this point of the recovery and in keeping with the findings of our latest builder surveys that have registered modest improvements in buyer traffic and near-term sales expectations for single-family homes," said NAHB Chief Economist David Crowe.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Federal Reserve Governor Elizabeth Duke said the housing market was improving through stabilizing home prices and a declining number of newly delinquent borrowers.
