Housing Starts Have Been on the Rise for the Past Four Months!
Reports show that housing starts have risen 3.6 percent in June. This followed a 17.3 rise the month before. This was caused by single-family starts, which have been on the rise. Multi-family starts have fallen 25.8 percent. However, this is still showing an improving real estate market. Builders are getting new opportunities to start new projects after starts with at their lows earlier this year due to lack of credit.
We are seeing the highest increase in single-family starts in the South. The West was only a slight increase whereas no rise was seen in the Northeast and the Midwest. Overall, the housing market for single-families is looking very good indeed. However, it’s not all good news.
Multi-family starts have been constantly falling after the 65.9 percent spike in May. We will most likely see the starts hit their bottom this second quarter. Multi-family home’s examples include apartments, condominiums, townhouses, etc. These homes have gone down 66 percent from an year ago. Though, apartment vacancies have rises drastically over the recent years, building permits recently were up 8.7 percent. This hints at the possibility that we may have hit the bottom in housing starts and we should expect an upward trend from here.
Is Wachovia right? Should we really expect the real estate market to have a turnaround?
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