New Residential Building Permits: 1.353M in March

The U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development have now published their findings for March new residential building permits. The latest reading of 1.353M was a decrease from 1.452M in February and above the Investing.com forecast of 1.300M.

Here is the opening of this morning's monthly report, including a note regarding revisions:

Statement Regarding COVID‐19 Impact: Due to recent events surrounding COVID‐19, many governments and businesses are operating on a limited capacity or have ceased operations completely. The Census Bureau has monitored response and data quality and determined estimates in this release meet publication standards.

Building Permits

Privately‐owned housing units authorized by building permits in March were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1,353,000. This is 6.8 percent (±1.1 percent) below the revised February rate of 1,452,000, but is 5.0 percent (±2.4 percent) above the March 2019 rate of 1,288,000. Single‐family authorizations in March were at a rate of 884,000; this is 12.0 percent (±1.9 percent) below the revised February figure of 1,005,000. Authorizations of units in buildings with five units or more were at a rate of 423,000 in March. [link to report]

Here is the complete historical series, which dates from 1960. Because of the extreme volatility of the monthly data points, a 6-month moving average has been included.

 

Here is the data with a simple population adjustment. The Census Bureau's mid-month population estimates show substantial growth in the US population since 1960. Here is a chart of housing starts as a percent of the population. We've added a linear regression through the monthly data to highlight the trend.

 

A Footnote on Volatility

The extreme volatility of this monthly indicator is the rationale for paying more attention to its 6-month moving average than to its noisy monthly change. Over the complete data series, the absolute MoM average percent change is 4.4%. The MoM range minimum is -24.0% and the maximum is 33.9%.

For visual confirmation of the volatility, here is a snapshot of the monthly percent change since 1990.