Increase in housing starts welcome news for US construction industry
By Kevin Doyle
One positive report certainly does not a recession end. However, coming on the heels of President Barack Obama’s prime time news conference on Tuesday, March 24 during which he stressed persistence as a key ingredient to climbing out of the economic abyss, it just may signal that the tide is beginning to turn.
The Commerce Department said Wednesday that sales of newly-built US single-family homes rose at their fastest pace in 10 months in February. A separate report revealed that durable goods orders rose 3.4 percent to $165.6 billion, the largest gain since December 2007. That followed a 7.3 percent decline in January.
Additionally, housing starts soared 22.2 percent in February, certainly welcome news for the beleaguered construction industry.
"The sky is no longer falling, we seem to have hit rock bottom. The data suggest that the weakest month of the recession possibly was January and now things will probably stabilize at this lower level," said Chris Rupkey, chief financial economist at Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ in New York.
Source: Reuters