May housing construction jumps by 17.2%

I find this to be very odd.
Why are builders getting back into the game with the glut of homes still sitting out there?

gotta keep this in mind:

"The 17.2 percent rise in housing construction for May still left activity 45.2 percent below where it was a year ago."

As we have discussed in other areas, at some point, percentage increases re: prior month have to go up simply because of the math involved.

It's down 47% from last year. But it is kind of crazy to see the numbers, even so, particularly as they were driven by the west. Just what the housing market needs, another 6 million homes built. I'll try to find it but somewhere I read that we have enough housing inventory to last for literally years without anything being built.

http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2009/06/housing-starts-may.html

keep em comin

Its called Seasonality

You f#ckward, home construction is ENTIRELY seasonl. The ONLY meaningful figure there is down 47% year over year.

Before you run your mouth Jason, have a look at this.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_pMscxxELHEg/SjeQ-G_ndzI/AAAAAAAAFiA/QqDZvqvRN8o/s1600-h/StartsMay2009.jpg

Housing starts over 4 decades.

June NAHB Housing index falls:
http://www.forbes.com/feeds/afx/2009/06/15/afx6545100.html

Anyone know where to go to find the housing start number for NYC only?

The 17% rise is for single family dwellings - multi-family buildings came in far below; still a rise, but nowhere near 17%.

Actually, I am looking at the wrong report - I have that absolutely backwards.

The index basically fell in half starting Oct 2008. The average value goes from 1137 for the year pre Oct '08 and 567 since.

From Oct '08 to Apr '09 the average adjusted monthly change is 18% so a 17% change from Apr-May is within the range of expectation. The news is a non-event in that the entire change can be explained by the data set volatility. There is nothing statistically significant in the numbers. Now if starts had increased 35% that would be something to talk about.

Typical new report adds nothing to the analysis and in fact removes information making everyone who reads it a little dumber. There may or may not be a housing recovery underway but you can't say "yes, there is" based on these numbers.

^ "typical NEWS report". Most reporters are either dumber of misleading.

"Before you run your mouth Jason, have a look at this."

You chart does not show seasonality. It shows annual housing starts.

Housing is seasonal. Starts are down 47% year-on-year, which is what economists and wall street analysts look at.

seasonality - exactly. done. why do people not get this!

urbandigs, are you saying that construction is not always seasonal? That they DO start/build in winter?

17% off a horrible low, and still down half from last year.

Amazing, some folks just have their heads still buried in the sand.

The best part of this is, literally last month, alpine took the housing starts DOWN number and tried to say "see, the housing market is improving".

I wonder how many of these housing "starts" are real starts as opposed to picking back up projects which had stopped?

These stats are from the free fall from September to March which was so agonizing all Cramer's hair fell out. We need more housing stock like we need another spike in interest rates that happened this week, along with more glut of new housing to hit when we still have a Pay Option ARM and Alt-A mortgage problem. This will hit in full force in 2010 and we are already seeing many mortgage holders having trouble with actual recasts brought on by negative amortization. Builders took a chance that they can get their homes finished before $8000 tax credit expires in nov 09.....smoke and mirrors!