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 although today’s results show some significant increases to permits and starts for the South and Midwest regions, this is occurring as a result of the typical seasonal pattern (despite the seasonal adjustment) of increased residential building activity in the first quarter of each year.
Also, it’s important to note that the most impaired regions of the West and Northeast are still firmly trending lower.
Single family housing permits, the most leading of indicators, again suggests extensive weakness in future construction activity dropping 42.26% nationally as compared to February 2008 and an astonishing 77.12% since the peak in January 2005.
Moreover, every region showed significant double digit declines to permits with the Northeast declining 45.5%, the Midwest declining 33%, the South declining 40.6%, and the West declining 51.9% on a year-over-year basis.
Keep in mind that these declines are coming on the back of the last three year of 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, 2007 and 2008 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 42.3% as compared to February 2008.
- For the Northeast, single family housing down 45.5% as compared to February 2008.
- For the Midwest, single family housing permits down 33.0% as compared to February 2008.
- For the South, single family housing permits down 40.6% compared to February 2008.
- For the West, single family housing permits down 51.9% as compared to February 2008.
Nationally
- Single family housing starts down 50.6% as compared to February 2008.
- For the Northeast, single family housing starts down 44.8% as compared to February 2008.
- For the Midwest, single family housing starts down 51.8% as compared to February 2008.
- For the South, single family housing starts down 45.7% as compared to February 2008.
- For the West, single family housing starts down 62.7% as compared to February 2008.
Nationally
- Single family housing completions down 44.3% as compared to February 2008.
- For the Northeast, single family housing completions down 25.4% as compared to February 2008.
- For the Midwest, single family housing completions down 45.5% as compared to February 2008.
- For the South, single family housing completions down 48.2% as compared to February 2008.
- For the West, single family housing completions down 39.2% as compared to February 2008.
