Home construction for the month dropped more than forecast, as the housing market probes the limits of how high housing prices can go under the COVID-19 Delta Variant threat to the economy July’s drop in U.S. housing starts outstripped forecast declines as consumer sentiment toward financed purchases faded to the lowest level since 2011. Of course, connection between those two economic measures is not direct, but the coincidence is interesting. Housing starts dropped 7.0% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.534 million units last month. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast starts would fall to a rate of 1.600 million units. Lots of red ink in the regional housing construction reports left total single-family starts down 4.5% across the U.S., and multifamily construction down 13.6%. READ FULL ARTICLE>>
