Today’s New Residential Construction Report continues to firmly demonstrate the intensity of the total washout conditions that now exist in the nation’s housing markets and particularly for new residential construction showing tremendous declines on both a peak and year-over-year basis to single family permits both nationally and across every region.Single family housing permits, the most leading of indicators, again suggests extensive weakness in future construction activity dropping 40.07% nationally as compared to April 2007.
Moreover, every region showed significant double digit declines to permits with the West declining 50.19%, the Midwest declining 34.13%, the South declining 38.24%, and the Northeast declining 32.58%.
Keep in mind that these declines are coming on the back of last year’s record declines.
To illustrate the extent to which permits and starts have declined, I have created the following charts (click for larger versions) that show the percentage changes of the current values on a year-over-year basis as well as compared to the peak year of 2004.
Declines to single family permits have contracted measurably in terms of monthly YOY declines, and the fact that we are now seeing declines of roughly 40%-50% on the back of 2006 and 2007 declines should provide a an unequivocal indication that the housing markets are by no means stabilizing.
Here are the statistics outlined in today’s report:
Housing Permits
Nationally
- Single family housing permits down 40.07% as compared to April 2007.
- For the Northeast, single family housing down 32.58% as compared to April 2007.
- For the Midwest, single family housing permits down 34.13% as compared to April 2007.
- For the South, single family housing permits down 38.24% compared to April 2007.
- For the West, single family housing permits down 50.18% as compared to April 2007.
Nationally
- Single family housing starts down 42.23% as compared to April 2007.
- For the Northeast, single family housing starts down 38.46% as compared to April 2007.
- For the Midwest, single family housing starts down 40.11% as compared to April 2007.
- For the South, single family housing starts down 42.94% as compared to April 2007.
- For the West, single family housing starts down 43.33% as compared to April 2007.
Nationally
- Single family housing completions down 37.63% as compared to April 2007.
- For the Northeast, single family housing completions increased 1.26% as compared to April 2007.
- For the Midwest, single family housing completions down 37.5% as compared to April 2007.
- For the South, single family housing completions down 39.26% as compared to April 2007.
- For the West, single family housing completions down 44.22% as compared to April 2007.
