Enjoy the rent slowdown while we can

Housing starts in March missed expectations by about a rather large 160k, only partly offset by an upward revision to February of 28k. As you’ve heard me say many times, good luck raising equity and getting a loan to build a multi family apartment building right now and that was reflected in a further decline in multi family starts which totaled just 299k, down from 382k in February and which touched 506k in December. Not including Covid, that’s the least amount since August 2017.

Single family starts totaled 1.022mm down 145k m/o/m but after rising by 149k in February. Smoothing this out, the 3 month average is now 1.069mm vs the 6 month average of 1.062mm and the 12 month average of 1.005mm.

As for permits, builders still want to build multi family as permits held steady at 485k vs 491k in February but we’ll see what equity and debt can be raised and how many project eventually gets started. Single family permits slowed by 59k m/o/m.