Home construction dipped in September
September saw the pace of home construction across the US slow, with housing starts sliding on both a month-over-month and annual basis while building permits also fell.
Government data released on Friday (October 18) showed that privately-owned housing starts hit a seasonally adjusted annual clip of 1.354 million in September, 0.5% lower than the revised August estimate and down 0.7% from the same month in 2023.
The seasonally adjusted annual rate of building permits authorized for privately-owned housing units, meanwhile, came in at 1.47 million. That marked a 2.9% slowdown from August and a 5.7% year-over-year drop.
Still, prospects on the single-family side were slightly brighter, with housing starts in that sector climbing by 2.7% compared with August as single-family building permits also posted a marginal gain, rising by 0.3%.
U.S. total #HousingStarts were 1354K (SAAR) in September 2024. #CensusEconData pic.twitter.com/iwGMhPLfvW
— U.S. Census Bureau (@uscensusbureau) October 18, 2024
Fortunes were mixed when it came to housing completions in September. A seasonally-adjusted annual rate of 1.68 million was 5.7% lower than revised August estimates – but 14.6% higher than the rate of completion a year prior.
Falling mortgage rates over the summer had spurred hopes that an uptick in home construction could be on the way, although a slight rebound in recent weeks dampened some of that optimism.
Home construction remains well below the levels required to ease the US’s acute housing supply shortage, with starts plunging in July to their lowest level since the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic.
High mortgage rates and construction costs served to weigh down the pace of homebuilding in that month, which saw construction dip to an annualized rate of 1.2 million – a sluggishness not seen since May 2020.
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