Housing Starts Decline in January
January housing starts dropped 16%, the largest decline since February 2011, the Commerce Department said Feb. 19.
Starts fell to an annual rate of 888,000 units in January from a revised 1.05 million pace in December.
Economists had forecast an annual rate of 950,000 in January, Bloomberg News reported.
A lot of it is weather, obviously, Richard Moody, chief economist at Regions Financial Corp., told Bloomberg.
The story is better job and income growth and you have all this pent-up demand. Youre seeing household formation start to improve and inventories have been pared down, said Moody.
Single family-unit construction fell 15.9% to an annual rate of 573,000 units, while multifamily-unit construction dropped 16.3% to an annual rate of 307,000.
Three of four regions saw a decline in starts in January, led by a 67.7% drop in the Midwest to a 50,000 annual rate, the lowest since 1959.