May housing starts jump in Northeast, fall elsewhere

Led by a boom in multifamily construction, housing starts in the Northeast catapulted 61.5 percent in May from April, the Census Bureau reported yesterday. Starts in the Northeast were still 10.9 percent below May 2007, and other regions and the nation as a whole experienced month-to-month and year-over-year declines.

Nationally, building permits fell 1.3 percent in May from April and 36.3 percent from May 2007. There were 975,000 housing starts in May - down 3.3 percent from April's 1 million starts, and down 32.1 percent from the 1.4 million starts in May 2007. The number of houses on which construction was completed in May rose 11.6 percent from April, but was still down 26.9 percent from a year ago. The Census Bureau report came a day after the National Association of Home Builders issued its June builder-confidence index, which it produces jointly with Wells Fargo & Co. The index of ...