WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- Starts of new homes in the United States dropped by 2.1% to a seasonally adjusted annual pace of 1.47 million in May, the softest pace of groundbreaking since January, the Commerce Department estimated Tuesday.
Meanwhile, building permits rose 3% to a 1.50 million pace as authorizations for new apartment buildings and condo projects surged.
So you have a mixed bag with new home starts down but building permits up. So there is a shift to home fix ups and multi-family housing, plus likely some weather related impact to home starts. But most intersting to me is some regional data at the end of the article:
Regionally, May's starts jumped 16% in the Northeast and the Midwest, while they fell by 2% in the South and by 20% in the West.
As a result, building starts in the West are now down 38% compared with last May, the largest year-over-year decline in the region in 16 years.
Rarely do economic changes hit equally in all geographic regions. Here you can see where "the West", however that is defined in this article, is experiencing a significantly slower building economy than elsewhere. The northeast and midwest is going full speed ahead.
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