Comments on October Housing Starts

Last Friday: Housing Starts increased to 1.290 Million Annual Rate in October

The housing starts report released Friday showed starts were up 13.7% in October compared to September, however starts were down 2.9% year-over-year compared to October 2016.

This first graph shows the month to month comparison between 2016 (blue) and 2017 (red).

Click on graph for larger image.

Starts were down 2.9% in October 2017 compared to October 2016 (a difficult comparison), and starts are up only 5.8% year-to-date.

Note that single family starts are up 10.2% year-to-date, and the weakness (as expected) has been in multi-family starts.

My guess was starts would increase around 3% to 7% in 2017.   Looks about right.

Below is an update to the graph comparing multi-family starts and completions. Since it usually takes over a year on average to complete a multi-family project, there is a lag between multi-family starts and completions. Completions are important because that is new supply added to the market, and starts are important because that is future new supply (units under construction is also important for employment).

These graphs use a 12 month rolling total for NSA starts and completions.

The blue line is for multifamily starts and the red line is for multifamily completions.

The rolling 12 month total for starts (blue line) increased steadily over the last few years - but has turned down recently.  Completions (red line) have lagged behind - and completions have just passed starts (more deliveries). 

Completions lag starts by about 12 months, so completions will probably turn down in about a year.

As I've been noting for a couple of years, the growth in multi-family starts is behind us - multi-family starts peaked in June 2015 (at 510 thousand SAAR).

The second graph shows single family starts and completions. It usually only takes about 6 months between starting a single family home and completion - so the lines are much closer. The blue line is for single family starts and the red line is for single family completions.

Note the low level of single family starts and completions.  The "wide bottom" was what I was forecasting following the recession, and now I expect a few more years of increasing single family starts and completions.