Construction of New Homes Up 9% in November

WASHINGTON — Construction of new homes jumped 9.3% in November, the first increase in 10 months, due to a huge boost in multifamily building, the government said today. Starts of single-family dwellings, however, fell to a level unmatched since the 1981-82 recession.

The Commerce Department said starts of new homes and apartments rose to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.13 million units, advancing for the first time since a 23.2% gain last January.

But despite the jump in multifamily construction, single-family starts fell 9.8% to their lowest level since October, 1982.

Housing starts during the first 11 months of the year were down 12.8% from the same period of 1989.

The drop followed revised declines of 6.6% in October and 2.2% in September. The declines in those months originally had been reported to be 6% and 2.1%.

Until November, housing starts had fallen for nine months in a row, the first time that has happened since the government began keeping track of them in 1959.

“We anticipate the rate to fall significantly further in the next few months,” economists at Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, a New York securities firm, wrote in the firm’s Bond Market Weekly.

That seemed to be supported by a 1.4% decline in applications for building permits, often a barometer of future activity. Applications totaled 907,000, the lowest level since 888,000 forms were filled out in April, 1982.

Housing starts rose 21.3% to 478,000 units in the South and 5.4% to 274,000 in the West.

But they were down 1.4% to 140,000 units in the Northeast, which has seen some of the slowest housing activity in recent months.

Starts were unchanged at 237,000 units in the Midwest.