Housing Starts came in much better than expected, on the surface.  We saw a reading of 532,000 on housing starts on an annual basis.  This is a gain of 17.2% and we were only expecting a 7% gain from the Dow Jones consensus.  This sounds huge on the surface, but the number is not exactly what it sounds like on the headline data.

Be advised that this number was very skewed because there was a surge in apartments.  The single-family numbers were “only” up 7.5% for May.  The balance of the gains came from apartments and other multi-family units.

Building permits rose 4.0% in May to 518,000 annualized and Dow Jones had an economist consensus estimate at a 2.4% gain of about 510,000 annualized units.

Jon C. Ogg
June 16, 2009