Construction, Housing Permit Backlogs Rose in January

Residential construction numbers for January were mixed . Permits were up slightly from December but starts fell back from December’s near 12-point surge and completions were down significantly from both December and January of last year. The U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development reported that residential construction permits were issued during the month at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.899 million units. This was 0.7 percent higher than the rate of 1.885 million units in December, a number that, in a rarity, was not revised. The January permit rate was 0.8 percent above the estimate for January 2021. Analysts polled by both Econoday and Trading Economics had expected a pullback, forecasting a permitting rate of 1.76 million units. Single-family permits drove the numbers. They were up 6.8 percent month-over-month to a seasonally adjusted rate of 1.205 million units. The previous month’s estimate, 1.128 million units, was also not revised.  Single-family permits were down 5.0 percent year-over-year. Permits for construction of units in buildings with five or more fell back from a rate of 690,000 in December to 629,000, a decline of 8.8 percent, but were 12.3 percent higher than a year earlier. On a non-adjusted basis, there were 132,500 permits issued for residential construction during the month, down from 153,200 in December. Single-family permits increased from 81,300 to 82,700. [housingpermitschart]