Starts and permits continue to be weak, but pickup in condo and apartment construction lift overall housing starts.
New construction of single-family homes fell to a 17-year low in January, according to a government report on the battered housing market released Wednesday.
At the same time, a pickup in apartments and condo construction resulted in a rare gain for housing starts overall.
Starts of single-family homes fell to an annual rate of 743,000 in the tenth straight monthly decline.
The level of single-family home building is down 5 percent from December, 34% from a year earlier and 60% from the record high reached only two years ago.
Still even with the continued decline in single-family homes, housing starts edged up to an annual
rate of 1.02 million from the revised 1 million rate for December. The overall number for January was roughly in line with the forecasts of economists surveyed by Briefing.com.
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