New Home Construction Falls 17% in February
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Image Source/Thinkstock(WASHINGTON) — Construction of new homes in the U.S. fell 17 percent last month from January to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 897,000, a new report out Tuesday by the Commerce Department finds.
The Northeast took the biggest hit, with housing starts falling more than 50 percent in that region.
As David Crowe from the National Association of Home Builders points out, frigid temperatures and mounds of snow were only part of the problem.
“NAHB and Wells Fargo released our sentiment survey of builders and it had fallen two points as well, so I think these two pieces of data combined say, while we’re still moving forward, there is still caution,” he says.
The report also shows that single family starts dropped 14.9 percent in February, and applications for building permits rose a timid three percent.
Crowe says tight lending standards have a chokehold on the housing market.
“The single biggest issue is the mortgage market. There are a lot of eligible buyers out there who are frozen out because of the uncertainty in the mortgage market,” he notes.
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