Mubasher: The US Census Bureau and the US Department of Housing and Urban Development jointly announced new residential construction statistics on Wednesday, which showed that privately-owned housing units, authorised under building permits, fell 1.35% in April from a month earlier. 

The data indicated a seasonally adjusted annual rate of approximately 1.35 million units last month, down from a revised March estimate of 1.377 million, the statement indicate.

However, the April figure is 7.7% higher than that achieved in the same month of 2017.

Meanwhile, privately-owned housing starts reached a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.287 million starts in April, which is 3.7% below the revised March estimate of 1.336 million, but 10.5% above the April 2017 rate of 1.165 million, the data revealed.

Privately-owned housing completions stood at seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.257 million completions last month, which is 2.8 % above March’s revised reading of 1.223 million, and 14.8% higher than the figure registered in the same period last year.

Meanwhile, single-family housing unit figures indicated a rise of 0.9% to 859,000 units last month, from the revised total of 851,000 authorisations in March.

Authorisations for five-or-more unit buildings recorded 450,000 in the fourth month of the year, the data released on Wednesday indicated.

Single-family housing starts saw a slight increase of 0.1% to a rate of 894,000 in April compared to the revised estimate of 893,000 starts the month before.

In addition, the rate for units in buildings with five units or more reached 374,000 starts in April.

As for single-family housing completed units, these dropped 4% to 820,000 in the fourth month of 2018 from the revised March figure of 854,000, whereas the rate for five-or-more unit buildings was at 425,000 completions.

By 12:47 pm GMT, the The ICE US dollar index gained 0.36% to 93.5500.