New housing authorizations in August declined to an estimated seasonally adjusted rate of 1.722 million units per year, the government said Sept. 19. That was down 2.3 percent from July’s revised 1.763 million units per year and 21.9 percent from the August 2005 estimate of 2.205 million units per year.
The monthly estimate, produced by the U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development, is based on building permits issued nationwide for privately owned residential construction projects.
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For single-family housing, the authorizations rate was 1.279 million units per year in August, the federal agencies reported, down 3.5 percent from July’s 1.325 million. For buildings with five or more units, the August rate was 370,000 units per year.
Privately owned housing starts in August were estimated at a seasonally adjusted rate of 1.665 million units per year, down 6.0 percent from July’s revised estimate of 1.772 million units per year and 19.6 percent from August 2005’s 2.075 million units per year.
Single-family starts in August were at a rate of 1.360 million units per year, down 5.9 percent from July’s 1.445 million units per year rate. For buildings of five or more units, the August rate was 265,000 units per year.
Housing completions in August were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.868 million, down 3.2 percent from the previous month’s 1.929 million units per year and 4.4. percent below the year-ago rate of 1.954 units per year.
Single-family completions in August were at a rate of 1.618 million units per year, 2.5 percent behind July’s annual completion rate of 1.660 million. For buildings with five or more units, the August rate was 230,000 units per year, the report said.
In the Northeast, based on building permits issued, 14,391 privately owned housing units were authorized in July, the latest month for which such figures are available. Of those, 9,056 units were single-family, 944 were two-family, 730 were three- and four-family, and 3,671 units (in 204 buildings) were five units or more.
Rhode Island had 129 housing authorizations in July, the report said: 118 single-family units, eight units of two-family housing, three units of three- and four-family housing, and none with five housing units or more.
(The Sept. 19 housing starts report follows reports Sept. 18 by the National Association of Home Builders, which found U.S. builders’ confidence fell in September to its lowest level since February 1991, and the Portland Cement Association, which predicts a 10.6-percent decline in housing starts this year a similar decline in 2007. A similar trend was seen in the Sept. 14 report by Countrywide Financial Corp., the nation’s largest mortgage lender, that it funded $40 billion in mortgage loans in August, down 24 percent from the same month last year, though Countrywide did see an increase from July’s $36 billion in lending; through August, the company said, it funded $296 billion in mortgages, down 4 percent from the $309 billion in the same period of 2005.)
The full federal report can be found online at www.census.gov.
