The number of new housing starts fell 3.0% in November to 861,000 from a downwardly revised 888,000 (from 894,000) in October. The Briefing.com consensus expected housing starts to fall to 875,000. Single-family construction levels fell from 589,000 in October to 565,000 in November. Multi-family housing starts dropped modestly from 299,000 to 296,000. Housing starts increased 18.4% from August through October, marking the most starts since the middle of 2008. That type of gain was unsustainable and a pullback to a more moderate growth path was anticipated. The underlying fundamentals, including relatively lower prices of existing homes and low inventories, will continue adding upward pressure on housing starts for the next several months. These pressures are showing up in the building permits data, which increased 3.6% to 899,000 in November. That was the most permits issued since July 2008 (921,000). The number of homes under construction, which factor into GDP growth, increased 2.1% to 530,000 from 519,000 in October.






