NEW YORK: Housing indicators continue to gather strength, helping the economy, in a new reality of lower home ownership with more multi family rentals.
If house prices decline and rents raise in 2012 the sectors current huge subsidies may become irrelevant even economically damaging. Full view will be published shortly.
US housing starts rose 9.3 percent in November to an annual rate of 685,000 units, the highest level since April 2010. New permits for construction rose 5.7 percent to 681,000. Starts of multi-family units rose 25.3 percent to a 238,000 annual rate, while single-family starts rose 2.3 percent to a 447,000 annual rate and multi-family permits rose 13.9 percent.
The National Association of Home Builders housing market index rose two points to 21 percent in December, its highest level since August 2007 but still only one point above its January 1991 nadir in the 1990-91 housing downturn.
Sales of new single-family houses were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 307,000 in October 2011, while inventory was 6.3 months' supply, down from 8.5 months' supply in October 2010. Existing home sales ran at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.97 million in October, while inventory was 3.33 million, down from a peak of 4.58 million in July 2008.
The US home ownership rate in the third quarter of 2011 was a seasonally adjusted 66.1 percent, down from an all-time peak of 69.4 percent in the second quarter of 2004. In 1995 it averaged 64.7 percent. The rental vacancy rate for the third quarter of 2011 was 9.8 percent since 2005 it has ranged between 9.2 percent and 11.1 percent.
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