WASHINGTON – Building permits for private housing units last month were issued at a seasonally adjusted rate of 1.568 million units per year, 2.8 percent less than December’s rate and 28.6 percent less than in January 2006, according to a report Friday from the U.S. Commerce Department’s Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Single-family permits were down 4.0 percent from December, to 1.168 million units per year.
Housing construction starts were down 14.3 percent from December and 37.8 percent from January 2006, to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.408 million units. Single-family housing starts were down 11.2 percent from December, at 1.108 million units per year.
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The pace was slower than predicted by economists in a Bloomberg News survey, whose median forecast was a January rate of 1.60 million starts per year, and it was the slowest pace reported since August 1997. Some of the slowing was credited to January’s weather, which ended the unseasonable warmth that had helped keep builders on the job in December.
But confidence among U.S. builders this month was at its highest level since June, in a survey released yesterday by the National Association of Home Builders and Wells Fargo.
Additional information is available at www.census.gov/newresconst.
