Construction on new U.S. homes rose in July at the fastest pace since the Great Recession, offering rock-hard proof that the housing market is the strongest it’s been in years, government data show.
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Housing starts in August rose 0.2 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.21 million homes, the Commerce Department said Tuesday. That’s the highest rate since October 2007, two months before the last recession began.
New applications for building permits, a bellwether for construction in coming months, declined 16.3% to 1.1 million.
The robust housing report surpassed Wall Street expectations.
Aided by steady job gains and low mortgage rates, sales of new and existing homes have climbed in the first half of 2015. Permits for single-family units fell 1.9 percent to a rate of 679,000, while multi-family permits were at a rate of 412,000. Construction of single-family houses accounted for all of the gains, shooting up 12.8 percent last month to the highest rate since December 2007. Most of that can be tied to the expiration of an incentive to build apartments in New York. After months of characterizing the housing recovery as “slow”, they said the sector showed “some improvement” in June and “additional improvement” in July.
Meanwhile, this report said creating licenses, a hallmark of time to come housing possibilities needs, dived 16.three percent to a annually flow of a. 119 huge number of in July after going for a eight-year intense of one. Starts also rose 20% in the Midwest.
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Homebuyers and renters have crowded into the housing market this year, pushing up prices to levels that have worsened affordability and placed a potential cap on sales growth. At the height of a housing market boom, starts topped 2 million a year.
