Single-family housing starts are up 16.8% for the first four months of 2016, compared with the same period in 2015, according to this Wall Street Journal article by Anna Louie Sussman and Ben Leubsdorf, which highlights a 6.6% increasing in starts for the month of April.
Home building in the U.S. rebounded in April, a sign the housing recovery could be finding traction after a slow first quarter.
Housing starts rose 6.6% from a month earlier to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.172 million in April, the Commerce Department said Tuesday.
The uptick was driven by a jump in starts in the Midwest, and a pickup in multifamily construction. Demand for housing has been steady, bolstered by historically low interest rates and ongoing job creation.
Starts on single-family homes, which account for roughly two-thirds of new construction, rose 3.3% in April. Starts on multifamily buildings with five or more units, which include apartments and condominiums, rose 10.7% to 373,000.
New applications for building permits, a bellwether for forthcoming construction, rose 3.6% to 1.116 million, from a downwardly revised March rate of 1.077 million.
