Popularly reported as showing a “bounce back” to housing starts, today’s New Residential Construction Report continues to indicate significant weakness in the nations housing markets and for residential construction.Although it’s a widely held belief that the best selling season is the spring, leading some to look for signs of strength later the year, it may be that this report is showing us the best numbers we are going to see for residential construction in 2007.
As Bob Toll recently recounted, the period between January and Presidents day weekend is considered the “hot” selling season in the new home market and by his account this year was a “bust”.
“Well the Spring selling season is over, it’s a misunderstanding that we have been unable to correct over the past 40 years. In the new home business, you start selling immediately after the holidays.. it increases in number and then there’s a pretty substantial jump right after the Super Bowl because ‘she’ hasn’t been able to get ‘him’ out of the seat to go and see the product on Sunday, which is our big day, then you continue to run-up from after the Super Bowl to Presidents Day weekend… That’s the peak of the market… We have had this substantial jump from the December sales into January, we had this substantial jump from January into February but that jump cam no where near on a per-community basis to what it’s been on an average over the past 10 years.”
Today’s report shows permits and starts down high double-digits both nationally and in every region with completions now accelerating to the downside as had been widely speculated.
In fact, the report shows that completions from January as well as on a year-over-year basis are now declining in every region with particularly steep declines as compared to February 2006.
Further significant declines from here on out would unequivocally indicate that the housing market has not yet stabilized.
Here are the statistics outlined in today’s report:
Housing Permits
Nationally
- Single family housing permits down 3.1% from January, down 32.9% as compared to February 2006
- For the Northeast, single family housing down 23.8% from January, down 38.9% as compared to February 2006.
- For the West, single family housing permits up 4% from January, down 30.0% as compared to February 2006.
- For the Midwest, single family housing permits down 16.9% from January, down 43.2% as compared to February 2006.
- For the South, single family housing permits up 1.4% from January, down 30.3% compared to February 2006.
Nationally
- Single family housing starts up 10.3% from January, down 32.7% as compared to February 2006.
- For the Northeast, single family housing starts down 26.0% from January, down 37.2% as compared to February 2006.
- For the West, single family housing starts up 37.4% from January, down 35.9% as compared to February 2006.
- For the Midwest, single family housing starts down 19.3% from January, down 52.3% as compared to February 2006.
- For the South, single family housing starts up 16.4% from January, down 23.5% as compared to February 2006.
Nationally
- Single family housing completions down 11.3% from January, down 23.1% as compared to February 2006.
- For the Northeast, single family housing completions down 24.1% from January, down 16.4% as compared to February 2006.
- For the West, single family housing completions down 10.9% from January, down 38.0% as compared to February 2006.
- For the Midwest, single family housing completions down 20.4% from January, down 36.4% as compared to February 2006.
- For the South, single family housing completions down 6.6% from January, down 11.5% as compared to February 2006.
housing+bubble real+estate new+construction housing+starts housing realtor permits home+sales cancellations residential decline MarketWatch
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