New Residential Construction Data for February 2010

The Census Department and HUD recently released a joint reprt on new residential construction data, including single family residential building permit issuances, housing starts, and housing completions.

Building permits for February were down 0.2 percent from January 2010. Housing starts  were down 0.6 percent over the same period, and completions actually saw an increase of 4.3 percent above the revised January rate.

The data shows the lifecycle of the residential construction process and gives us a hint at changing supply in the near future.  Extrapolating further, one can read into the overall health of the construction market, and a possible short term rebound in building trends.

Many are citing bad winter storms as the reason for the negative short-term trend in building starts, and expect the trend to reverse as we move into the prime building summer months.

For more information on the data or to read the full report click here.