By Dees Stribling | MHN Online
The end of last week was marked by news affecting commercial real estate, mainly through its many and varied links with the residential market. Most directly, privately owned housing starts were at an annualized rate of 1.174 million units in June, according to the Census Bureau on Friday. That’s a spike of 9.8 percent above the revised May figure, and lest anyone believe that’s month-over-month noise—which isn’t an unreasonable belief—the June 2015 rate is 26.6 percent above the June 2014 rate. All of the monthly increase was because of an upward swing in apartment starts, up 28.6 percent for the month, while single-family starts actually dropped for the month by 0.9 percent.
