After Housing Starts collapsed 12.9% in June, July rebounded just 0.9% (dramatically missing expectations of a 7.4% bounce) as Permits rose 1.5% month over month.
A second month in a row with a massive miss to economists’ expectations…
Single-family starts remain very soft and multi-family starts barely rebound at all from June’s crash…
And housing starts are now down year over year for The 2nd month in a row…
Permits rebounded very modestly in both single- and multi-family units…
Two of four regions posted a gain in starts, with the South increasing 10.4 percent and the Midwest climbing by 11.6 percent; the Northeast declined 4 percent and the West plunged 19.6 percent, the biggest drop since January 2017
Finally we note that US home builder stocks have been tracking fundamentals dramatically lower all years…
Time for some more rate-hikes…
Easy Money Martin 