US single-family housing starts drop sharply in June
Homebuilding activity in the US slowed sharply last month.
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According to the US Department of Commerce, in seasonally adjusted terms, housing starts slipped by 2.0% month-on-month to reach an annualised rate of 1.559m (consensus: 1.59m).
That put them 6.3% below their year earlier level.
Worth noting, starts for single-family homes, the most important piece of the report, dropped by 8.1% on the month before to 982,000.
Similarly, building permits, which lead starts, dipped by 0.6% versus May to hit 1.685m but that was ahead of the consensus forecast for 1.67m.
But here too, permits for new single-family homes were off by 8.0% on the month to 967,000.
"Homebuilders need to adjust rapidly to a world with fewer buyers and much more competition from private sellers of existing homes, whose listings jumped by a third in the three months to May, with much more coming," said Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics.
"In short, housing construction is nowhere near the bottom."