New Home Construction Up in April
A lack of inventory has been plaguing the housing market for some time now. Fortunately, builders are rising to the challenge of supplying demand for new homes. After a weak start to the construction season, new construction experienced a healthy rise through April. Last month, according to the Commerce Department, housing starts jumped up by 6.6%. This puts them at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of about 1.17 million houses. Applications for permits to construct new homes went up by 3.6%.
Unfortunately, the news is not as good as it could be. There is still a ways to go before the market fully compensates for the 9.4% drop in March. Meanwhile, through groundbreakings are beating last year’s rate, not much of this is going on here in the Lynnwood area. Starts were up by 22.2% in the Midwest and 14.1% in the South, but they actually declined by 10% in the West and 7.6% in the Northeast.
National builder sentiment for May has held at 58 for the fourth month in a row, telling us that we can likely expect further strong construction activity in the future.
