Housing Starts, Permits Plunge In September

Following the dramatic surge in Housing Starts and Permits in August, expectations were for a notable drop/reversion in September and both dropped significantly.

• Housing Starts -9.4% MoM (+15.1% prior, -3.2% exp)

• Building Permits -2.7% MoM (+8.2% prior, -5.3% exp)

Extremely noisy…

Source: Bloomberg

Year-over-year, both starts and permits saw growth slowdown with starts plunging from +8.4% to just +1.6% YoY…

Source: Bloomberg

The drop in starts was driven by a plunge in multifamily starts from 456K SAAR in August to 327K in Sept.

But the multifamily series has become extremely volatile…

Starts decreased across all four national regions, led by a 34.3% slump in the Northeast.

Groundbreakings for single-family properties grew at the fastest pace since January. That gain was offset by a 28.2% drop in new construction of apartment buildings and condominiums, a category that tends to be volatile.

The report reflects some cooling as starts pull back from the best pace since 2007 the prior month.