Clare Trapasso | realtor.com
Desperate house hunters, whose patience and bank accounts have been stretched pretty thin by the sheer lack of homes on the market, may soon find a little relief—even if it’s not quite as much relief as economists had hoped for.
The number of new residences under construction in March shot up nearly 17.5% over the previous year, to 972,100,according to the non-seasonally adjusted numbers in the U.S. Department of Commerce’s monthly new residential construction report. It was a more modest increase, almost 1.5%, over the number of new homes rising from the earth in February.
That’s looking at the actual numbers, rather than those that are adjusted to compensate for seasonal fluctuations. The seasonally adjusted numbers, which have been smoothed out over a 12-month basis, showed monthly drops in the number of new permits issued and construction starts.
