U.S. Housing Starts Surprisingly Buoyant Year to Date
One of the true economic surprises of the pandemic is how little sway it has been holding over housing starts.
In the U.S. (Graph 1), the Census Bureau is saying that year-to-date monthly average residential groundbreakings (in units) are +6.5% compared with January-to-September 2019.
In Canada (Graph 9), as reported by CMHC, monthly average starts are basically level with last year, +0.7%, but that’s commendable considering how much havoc has been created elsewhere in the economy by the coronavirus health crisis.
There have been only two months of extreme weakness in U.S. housing starts to date in 2020 that can be attributed to pandemic lockdown measures ‒ April (934,000 units seasonally adjusted and annualized/SAAR) and May (1.038 million units).
In September, American housing starts were back above 1.4 million units. Regionally (Graph 7), on a percentage-change basis, the Midwest has been leading (+12.7%), followed by the West (+6.8%) and the South (+6.1%), with the Northeast (0.0%) in a holding pattern.
