US Housing Starts, Permits Slide In February Ahead Of Virus Impact

Housing Starts and Building Permits were understandably expected to contract MoM in February as the virus crisis began to weigh on confidence (though rates collapsed and sent homebuilder stocks soaring) and they did.

• Housing starts fell 1.5% MoM (better than the 4.3% drop expected and even more impressive after a huge upward revision from -3.6% in January to +1.4%)

• Building Permits tumbled 5.5% MoM in February (worse than the 3.2% drop expected) – its worst MoM drop since Feb 2017.

Source: Bloomberg

Housing Starts are up 39.2% YoY…

Under the hood, single-family starts surged to highest since June 2007 as multi-family uniots tumbled from 612k to 508k…

Single-family permits rose above 1 million (1.004mm) for the first time since June 2007 as multi-family permits tumbled from 520k to 415k…

And all of this was before the real impact of the virus hit.