Residential construction was at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $256.1 billion in April, 2.8 percent above the revised March estimate of $249.31 billion, according to figures released Friday by the U.S. Department of Commerce.
"There's a modest uptick in demand" for homes, Michael Gapen, a senior U.S. economist at Barclays Plc in New York, told Bloomberg. "The housing recovery should broaden out this year. We're coming off the bottom."
Overall spending on private construction-including both residential and non-residential building-was at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $549.7 billion, 1.2 percent above the revised March estimate of $543.4 billion, marking the second consecutive month of construction spending increases. Meanwhile, spending on both public and private construction was estimated at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $820.7 billion, 0.3 percent above the revised March estimate of $818.1 billion and 6.8 percent above the April 2011 estimate of $768.2 billion. For the first four months of 2012, this figure reached 238.5 billion, or 7.3 percent above the 222.2 billion for the same period in 2011.
