Starts bounce back
Despite widespread builder concern and economic anxiety, the U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's latest data on housing starts offers plenty of good news.
Privately-owned housing starts in Feb. 2025 clocked in at 1,501,000, which is is 11.2 percent above the revised January estimate of 1,350,000. Year-over-year, Feb. 2025's starts are slightly lower (2.9 percent) than the February 2024 rate of 1,546,000.
Single-family housing starts also jumped month-over-month in February, coming in at 1,108,000. This figure is 11.4 percent above the revised January figure of 995,000. Year-over-year, however, Feb. 2025's numbers are slightly under February 2024's performance of 1,134,000 single-family starts.
Regional data
Month-over-month, every region except the Midwest (-24.9% total starts and -25.6% single-family starts) showed positive traction. The Northeast, in particular, put up big numbers, registering a 47.4% month-over-month jump in total starts and a 75% bump in single-family builds.
In year-over-year terms, the West shows solid gains, up 26.2 and 20.3%, respectively, for total starts and single-family starts.
Despite February's above-average performance, Jing Fu, NAHB's senior director of forecasting and analysis, offers a bit of caution moving ahead.
"Despite elevated interest rates and policy uncertainty, ongoing lean levels of single-family existing home inventory helped to boost single-family production in February,” Fu said. “NAHB forecasts that single-family starts will remain effectively flat in 2025 as prospects of a better regulatory business climate are offset by uncertainty on the tariff front. Meanwhile, multifamily construction is expected to remain soft in early 2025 due to challenging financing conditions, before stabilizing in the second half of the year.”
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