Residential building permits in January shows the rate of growth continues to moderate. The data was under consensus expectation.
- The rate of annual growth for building permits in the last 12 months for this sector has been mostly in a channel between 25% and 40%. This month again remains well below this channel – and the slowest growth rate since 2011.
- 3 month rolling averages (comparing the current averages to the averages one year ago) are now showing deceleration in both building permits and completions.
3 Month Rolling Averages of Year-over-Year Growth Unadjusted Data
| Â | Building Permits | Construction Completions |
| Current Movement | decelerating | accelerating |
| Movement Compared to Rolling average one year ago | decelerating | decelerating |
Â
Unadjusted 3 Month Rolling Average of Year-over-Year Growth – Building Permit (blue line) and Construction Completions (red line)
Econintersect Analysis:
- Building permits growth decelerated 15.0% month-over-month, and is up 0.9% year-over-year.
- Single family building permits rose 1.7% year-over-year.
- Construction completions decelerated 0.8% month-over-month, up 14.3% year-over-year.
US Census Headlines:
- building permits down 5.4% month-over-month, up 2.4% year-over-year
- construction completions up 4.6% month-over-month, up 13.1% year-over-year.
- the market expected 925K to 1015K (consensus 975K) annualized seasonally adjusted housing permits issued versus the 937K reported
Note that Econintersect analysis herein is based on UNADJUSTED data – not the headline seasonally adjusted data.
When more building permits are issued than residences completed – the industry is expanding – and this expansion has been underway for over a year. The “less bad†/ “more good†growth trend line has been positive since 2009. In the graph below, any value above zero shows more permits are being issued than completions.
