Residential building permits were not good. Even construction completions outnumbered permits (showing that the future is darkening as there will be less homes to build). All data is decelerating.
The unadjusted rate of annual growth for building permits in the last 12 months has declined from a channel between 25% and 40% to now contraction year-over-year.
Unadjusted 3 month rolling averages for permits (comparing the current averages to the averages one year ago) show that construction completions are clearly higher than permits. This means shortly there should be a deceleration of construction completions.
3 month Rolling Average for Year-over-Year Growth Unadjusted Data
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 9.3% month-over-month, and is down 5.0% year-over-year.
Whenever permits rate of growth is lower than completions – this industry is decelerating. This is the first month in 3 years where permits issued are lower than construction completions.
Single family building permits declined 5.9% year-over-year.
Construction completions decelerated 13.7% month-over-month, up 1.0% year-over-year.
US Census Headlines:
building permits down 5.2% month-over-month, down 0.2% year-over-year
construction completions down 6.4% month-over-month, up 4.5% year-over-year.
the market expected:
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 was underway for two years – until last month and this month where less permits than completions occurred. In the graph below, any value above zero shows more permits are being issued than completions.
