Housing Starts Fall in August

WASHINGTON - U.S. housing starts dropped by a larger-than-expected 1.3 percent in August as a 9.4 percent slide in multifamily housing construction offset a slight increase in groundbreaking on single-family homes, a Commerce Department report showed on Tuesday.

Hurricane Katrina, which hit the U.S. Gulf Coast at the end of August, had a minimal impact on the housing starts data, the Commerce Department said. It noted metro areas most affected by the hurricane accounted for about 1.1 percent of total permit authorizations in the United States in 2004, and 2.4 percent of permit activity in the South.

August housing starts slowed to a 2.009 million unit annual rate, down from July, which saw starts revised down to a 2.035 million unit pace from an originally reported 2.042 million unit pace.

Wall Street economists had expected housing starts to decrease to a 2.025 million unit annual pace in August, saying Hurricane Katrina disrupted construction late in the month.

According to the Commerce Department, 60 of the 260 jurisdictions in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama which reported data in July did not report in August. The department imputed data for August, but said it would not do so in September. Government statisticians will assume no permits were issued for jurisdictions that do not report permit activity in September.

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Source: Washington Post