Housing Starts Slide in May, But Single-Family Holds Steady

The latest Residential Construction report from the Census Bureau showed a noticeable drop in overall housing starts in May, though single-family activity managed a small gain. Building permits also declined, continuing a trend of slight cooling in new construction momentum.

As usual, the market focuses most on building permits and housing starts, with the latter representing the beginning of actual construction activity. Total starts fell nearly 10% to an annual pace of 1.256 million, down from 1.392 million in April.

The decline was almost entirely due to a sharp drop in multifamily starts, which fell from 420k to 316k, the lowest level in over a year. In contrast, single-family starts edged up slightly to 924k from 920k.

Building permits—a forward-looking…