Home starts still weak despite surprising jump

Housing starts took a surprising jump in June, the government reported on Thursday, but only because of a change in New York's building code that briefly obscured a drop in single-family home building.
Total starts rose 9.1 percent in June but would have dropped 4 percent except for the actions of New York City builders who sped up multi-family projects before new construction rules took hold on July 1, the Commerce Department said.

The rate of building permits, which signal future building plans, rose 11.6 percent but would have climbed only 0.7 percent except for the code change, the government said.

"The housing starts number is bloated," said Pierre Ellis, senior economist at Decision Economics, New York. "The important thing is that single-family starts were weaker than expected."

Read Complete Story