The National Association of Home Builders reported housing starts this week for the month of April 2008:
Single-family housing starts dropped 1.7 percent for the month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 692,000 units, the lowest monthly production rate since January 1991 and 42.2 percent below April 2007.
I remember seeing on Yahoo! the positive news story about housing starts being up, but when you look under the hood at the statistics and the details of the release from the NAHB, you see that the multi-family starts overly influenced the report. The fact is, across the country, demand for single family homes remains soft and the builders remain pessimistic about their futures – see graphical display below courtesy of Calculated Risk.
Locally here in the Twin Cities and particularly the western suburbs, while business is certainly softer than many builders would like to see, I am seeing some encouraging activity in new developments such as Prominence Woods (Maple Grove, MN – Wayzata Schools), Taryn Hills (Plymouth, MN – Wayzata Schools) and Bridgewater at Lake Medina (Medina, MN – Wayzata Schools). Several spec homes have recently gone pending meaning someone has purchased the home but it has not closed yet.