Washington, DC, December 20, 2005--Housing starts in November rose 5.3 percent, the Commerce Department reported.
November housing starts increased to a 2.123 million unit annual rate, faster than the 2.017 million unit annual rate expected by Wall Street economists, who had anticipated rising mortgage rates would cool activity.
October starts were revised up to a 2.017 million unit annual pace from the originally reported 2.014 million unit rate.
Single-family housing starts rose 4.8 percent to a 1.808 million unit annual rate while starts on multifamily units jumped 7.9 percent to a 315,000 unit pace.
Building permits rose 2.5 percent in November to a 2.155 million unit pace. Economists had expected permits to fall to a 2.093 million unit pace from October's revised 2.103 million unit pace.
Permits for single-family homes increased 0.2 percent, but jumped 15 percent for housing with five or more units --marking the biggest percentage increase since July 2004, when it surged 18.2 percent.
Starts climbed throughout most of the country, except the U.S., south, which reported a 1.3 percent decline in groundbreaking. Starts rose 12.3 percent in the midwest, 11.5 percent in the west and 11 percent in the northeast.
The 580,000 unit pace of housing starts in the west was the fastest for that region since December 1978, when it was 645,000 units, the Commerce Department said.
