Quikrete Industry Dashboard

Total housing starts, single-family housing starts and existing home sales were all released this week. All showed declines.

After May’s glowing report on residential construction activity, the latest report for June showed the seasonally adjusted annual rate of total housing starts fell 8.0 percent to 1,434,000. Single-family starts also dropped from an upwardly revised rate of 1.005 million to 935,000.

Existing home sales, released Thursday, also showed declines for the month and for the year. Still, National Association of Realtors Chief Economist Lawrence Yun remained relatively upbeat. “Fewer Americans were on the move despite the usual life-changing circumstances,” he said. “The pent-up demand will surely be realized soon, especially if mortgage rates and inventory move favorably.”

Stock prices were mostly up for the month and the year for the 10 ticker symbols tracked on the Dashboard. Builders FirstSource was up more than 100 percent for the year. Beacon is up almost 50 percent. Only one company’s stock is down for the year: Stanley Black and Decker, down more than 10 percent.

The monthly sales charts for NAICS 444 (building material and garden equipment and supplies dealers) and the subset of 44413 (hardware stores) posted mixed numbers. For 444, June sales were down for the month and down for the year.

For hardware stores – a classification of retail for which the latest available data is May — sales were up for both the month and the year. The U.S. Census Bureau estimated hardware store sales in May at $3.88 billion.

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Coming next: The New York-based economic think tank The Conference Board will release the closely watched Consumer Confidence Index on July 26. For June, the index stood at 109.7, well ahead of the prior-year’s figure of 98.4 (1985=100).

Last month’s figure improved to its highest level since January 2022, reflecting “improved current conditions and a pop in expectations,” said Dana Peterson, chief economist at The Conference Board.