Following the plunge in homebuilder sentiment (beginning to catch down to homebuyer sentiment) and the disappointment in home sales, analysts oddly expected mixed data with Starts falling but forward-looking permits rising modestly. They underestimated both…
After Housing Starts unexpectedly surged in June, July saw starts collapse, down 7.0% MoM (vs -2.6% expected). Building Permits went the other way, rising 2.6% MoM, better than the +1.0% expected (this is the first MoM rise in permits since March)…
Source: Bloomberg
Total Permits and Starts are back at pre-COVID levels…
Source: Bloomberg
The base effect from last year’s brief collapse is now over and Housing Starts YoY have normalized…
Source: Bloomberg
The plunge in Starts was dominated by multi-family units:
And on the Permits side, the picture was entirely different with multi-family rebounding as single-family permits continue to slide…
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Singlefamily units -1.7%
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Multifamily units +12.2%
And so with home prices at record-er and record-er high prices, thanks in large part to Wall Street’s domination of the bid, we wonder just what damage The Fed can do to this nascent bubble next?
Source: https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/us-housing-starts-plunge-july
