Housing Starts Fall to 16-Year Low

Single-family housing starts fell to just 829,000 units in November, the lowest reading since April 1991, according to new figures released by the Commerce Department.Compared with the level of the previous month, starts fell 4.4%, but compared with that of a year earlier, the decline was a startling (but not unexpected) 34.9%. "There is no question that builders, especially the large national ones, are in full retrenchment mode right now, as well they should be in light of the sales and inventory situation," said RBS Greenwich chief economist Stephen Stanley. He said the only "good news" is that "new home inventories have been falling this year." There was other good news, though: multifamily starts rose 4.4% from the previous month's level and 22.1% compared with that of November 2006.