According to the latest new construction data from the U. S. Census Bureau http://www.census.gov/const/newresconst.pdf, the housing industry continued it's devastating downturn in September. Total permits fell to a rate of 786,000 and single family permits fell to 532,000 on a seasonally adjusted basis. This represents a decline from August of 8.3% (total) and 3.8% (S/F) respectively. As you can see from the chart above, all measures of housing still continue to be in a precipitous decline. Building permits represent our future business, what this tells us is that we must work even harder to gain more market share in the near future.
Starts fell as well, with total starts decreasing 6.3% from August to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 817,000.
The largest portion of housing construction is single family. Single family starts fell to 544,000, a decline of 12%. According to the historical data, this is only 21,000 seasonally adjusted annual starts above the low set in October of 1981. If our market area is any indication of where the national and regional data will be in October, or if the trend simply continues, we will set a new historical low for single family starts this year.
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