Housing Starts Plunge

CNBC reports that housing starts fell in May. The Commerce Department said on Tuesday that groundbreaking on new homes dropped 4.8 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 708,000 units. The reading, which is prone to significant revisions, was below the median forecast in a Reuters poll of a 720,000-unit rate. 

This from Zero Hedge:

We just got another indication of how US housing has "bottomed"... if only in terms of promises and strong words. While permits, or promises that at some point in the indefinite future, a house will be built, soared from 723K to an annualized rate of 780K, the highest since September 2008, on expectations of a 730K print, actual holes dug, or Starts plunged from a revised 744K to 708K, the biggest miss of expectations of a modest improvement from the pre-revision number since April 2011, and the biggest sequential drop since August 2011. 

And while recently all the starts strength was in multi-family units as America prepares to become a renter society, in May it was actually the 1-unit houses that saw an increase from 500K to 516K units, as multi-family tumbled from 236K to 179K. So much for the REO-To-Rent plan? Finally, looking at actual completions, the number tumbled by 10.3% from an annual rate of 667K to 598K in May.