Today’s New Residential Construction Report continues to firmly demonstrate the intensity and completeness of the washout conditions that now exist in the nation’s housing markets 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.It’s important to note that today’s results strongly indicate that a new leg in the housing decline was reached between October and December with permit activity falling at the most significant rate seen in this decline.
Single family housing permits, the most leading of indicators, again suggests extensive weakness in future construction activity dropping 49.2% nationally as compared to December 2007 and an astonishing 77.50% since the peak in January 2005.
Moreover, every region showed significant double digit declines to permits with the Northeast declining 43.7%, the Midwest declining 49.1%, the South declining 49.7%, and the West declining a stunning 50.3% on a year-over-year basis.
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 30%-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 seasonally adjusted statistics outlined in today’s report:Housing Permits
Nationally
- Single family housing permits down 49.2% as compared to December 2007.
- For the Northeast, single family housing down 43.7% as compared to December 2007.
- For the Midwest, single family housing permits down 49.1% as compared to December 2007.
- For the South, single family housing permits down 49.7% compared to December 2007.
- For the West, single family housing permits down 50.3% as compared to December 2007.
Nationally
- Single family housing starts down 48.9% as compared to December 2007.
- For the Northeast, single family housing starts down 37.8% as compared to December 2007.
- For the Midwest, single family housing starts down 47.5% as compared to December 2007.
- For the South, single family housing starts down 50.8% as compared to December 2007.
- For the West, single family housing starts down 50.0% as compared to December 2007.
Nationally
- Single family housing completions down 34.9% as compared to December 2007.
- For the Northeast, single family housing completions down 24.524.7% as compared to December 2007.
- For the Midwest, single family housing completions down 49.7% as compared to December 2007.
- For the South, single family housing completions down 31.3% as compared to December 2007.
- For the West, single family housing completions down 35.5% as compared to December 2007.
Keep in mind that this particular report does NOT factor in the cancellations that have been widely reported to be occurring in new construction.
