By Dees Stribling | MHN Online
The Census Bureau reported that U.S. housing starts were at an annualized rate of 999,000 units, a drop of 9.8 percent from the November rate, which was 1.107 million units. The December 2013 rate was, however, 1.6 percent higher than in December 2012.
Single-family housing starts in December came in at an annualized rate of 667,000, which is 7 percent below the revised November figure of 717,000. Multifamily starts, which tend to bounce around more than single-family starts, were also down for the month (by 17.9 percent) and the year (by 9.6 percent).
For the entire year of 2013, housing starts gained 18.3 percent compared with starts in 2012, coming in at a grand total of 923,000 units. Even so last year was low, historically speaking, since starts averaged about 1.5 million units annually from 1959 — when the bureau started keeping track of new housing starts — to 2000, before the bubble market drove starts through the roof and then the recession drove them through the floor.
