After a big plunge in March (it’s the weather, stupid), Housing Starts were expected to rebound in April… but did not! Starts dropped 2.6% in April, after March’s 6.6% drop. Building Permits also tumbled 2.5% MoM – also multiple standard-deviations below expectations.
Single family permits dropped to 789K, the lowest since November (and multi-family is also at its lowest since Nov)
Starts drop for second month in a row to 1.172MM, lowest since November 2016…
Housing Starts are now lower than they were two years ago…
So this is probably transitory of course.
