The U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development have now published their findings for April new residential building permits. The latest reading of 1.352M was an increase from a revised 1.377M in March and slightly above the Investing.com forecast of 1.347M. Unadjusted figures were revised going back to January 2012 and seasonally adjusted figures were revised going back to January 2013.

Here is the opening of this morning's monthly report:

Building Permits

Privately-owned housing units authorized by building permits in April were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1,352,000. This is 1.8 percent (±1.3 percent) below the revised March rate of 1,377,000, but is 7.7 percent (±0.9 percent) above the April 2017 rate of 1,255,000. Single-family authorizations in April were at a rate of 859,000; this is 0.9 percent (±1.4 percent)* above the revised March figure of 851,000. Authorizations of units in buildings with five units or more were at a rate of 450,000 in April. [link to report]

Here is the complete historical series, which dates from 1960. Because of the extreme volatility of the monthly data points, a 6-month moving average has been included.

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Here is the data with a simple population adjustment. The Census Bureau's mid-month population estimates show substantial growth in the US population since 1960. Here is a chart of housing starts as a percent of the population. We've added a linear regression through the monthly data to highlight the trend.

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A Footnote on Volatility

The extreme volatility of this monthly indicator is the rationale for paying more attention to its 6-month moving average than to its noisy monthly change. Over the complete data series, the absolute MoM average percent change is 4.4%. The MoM range minimum is -24.0% and the maximum is 33.9%.

For visual confirmation of the volatility, here is a snapshot of the monthly percent change since 1990.

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