The U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development have now published their findings for December new residential building permits. The latest reading of 1.33M was down 1.55% from the November reading and is below the Investing.com forecast of 1.37M.

Here is the opening of this morning's monthly report:

Building Permits

Privately‐owned housing units authorized by building permits in December were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of
1,330,000. This is 1.6 percent below the revised November rate of 1,351,000 and is 29.9 percent below the December 2021 rate
of 1,896,000. Single‐family authorizations in December were at a rate of 730,000; this is 6.5 percent below the revised
November figure of 781,000. Authorizations of units in buildings with five units or more were at a rate of 555,000 in December. [link to report]

Here is the complete historical series, which dates from 1960. Because of the extreme volatility of the monthly data points, a six-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 six-month moving average than to its noisy monthly change. Over the complete data series, the absolute MoM average percent change was 4.4%. The MoM range minimum was -24.0% and the maximum was 33.9%.

For visual confirmation of the volatility, here is a snapshot of the monthly percent change since 1960.

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