US housing starts fall for third consecutive month in September
A key indicator of homebuilding activity in the States fell back for a third consecutive month in September, but some economists brushed off the data, saying they expected to see at least a partial rebound in coming months.
US housing starts fell by 4.7% month-on-month in September to reach an annualised pace of 1.127m, according to the Department of Commerce.
That fell well short of the 1.18m pace of starts projected by economists.
Offsetting last month's 'miss', the rate of change in starts for August was revised up from a fall of 0.8% on the month to a smaller -0.2% drop.
The number of housing permits, a widely-followed lead indicator for activity in the sector, also declined in September, by 4.5% to 1.215m (consensus: 1.235m).
Starts were weaker in all regions save in the West, where they increased by 15.7%.
Both single and multi-family home starts fell, retreating by 4.6% and 6.2% on the month to hit annualised rates of 829,000 and 286,000, respectively.
For Pooja Sriram at Barclays Research, the drop in single family starts was only "a touch" bigger than he had forecast, with the fall in the multi-family segment accounting for the brunt of the downwards surprise.
However, he was confident that multi-family starts would rebound to above 300,000 in coming months and despite Wednesday's poor numbers he left his tracking estimate for third quarter US GDP unchanged at 2.3%.