Source: Housing Wire —
On Thursday, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that housing permits came in at an excellent print at 1,899,000, surprising me. Then I took a look at housing completions at 1,246,000, and it reminded me of the sad state of the housing market. We have the demand — we just don’t have the supply.
Global pandemics have always created short-term shortages due to a lack of production capacity. However, the COVID-19 pandemic happened in the middle of the most enormous housing demographic patch ever recorded in our history. Then on top of all that, existing total inventory has broken to all-time lows. You can understand why I keep saying this is the unhealthiest housing market post-2010.
Housing starts, just like new home sales, can be wild month to month, so the trend is your friend and the direction in housing permits has been good enough to keep construction going.
