US housing starts rise in October, on strength in multi-family segment
A key indicator of activity in the US housing sector picked-up more quickly than expected last month, although the details of the report were a bit weak.
According to the Department of Commerce, the annualised pace of growth in housing starts increased at a month-on-month pace of 1.5% in October to reach 1.228m.
That was a tad shy of economists' median forecast for 1.3m, but an upwards revision to the prior month's reading, from 1.201m to 1.210m, more than offset that shortfall.
However, starts for single-family homes, the most closely followed piece of data in the rpeort, weakened by 1.8% on the month to reach an annualised pace of 865,000, even as multi-family starts jumped by 6.2% to 343,000.
Housing permits, or authorisations to begin construction work, on the other hand slipped by 0.6% versus September to reach an annualised clip of 1.263m.
Yet that was better than the 1.26m pace economists had anticipated.