Latest from Mag

Plenty of executive appointments over the past two weeks. Here’s Electrical Marketing’s expanded coverage of personnel changes in the electrical market.
Dec. 21, 2012
Wire man John Pasqual and lighting rep Jack Melnick
Dec. 21, 2012
Image
Electrical product prices remained on their flat trend, showing no change from October and little change in almost all major product categories.
Dec. 21, 2012
Image
Privately-owned housing starts in November were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 861,000, 3% below the revised October estimate, but 21.6% above the Nov. 2011 rate.
Dec. 21, 2012
Veteran reps form new agency in Raleigh; WinWholesale buys Lloyd Graves in Texas; United Electric Supply expands through acquisition; and more.
Dec. 21, 2012
W.W. Grainger Inc., Lake Forest, Ill., announced plans to purchase Techni-Tool Inc., Worcester, Pa., a 200-plus employee distributor supplying customers in the cable television...
Dec. 21, 2012
Kaman Industrial Technologies (KIT), the industrial distribution business Kaman Corp., Bloomfield, Conn., has built up in recent acquisitions of Minarik, Zeller Electric and others...
Dec. 21, 2012
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg offered an update on the city’s plans to renovate its infrastructure to withstand future storms.
Dec. 7, 2012

Housing Starts Pick Up in February

Nationwide housing starts turned upward for the first time in eight months this February, posting a 22.2 percent gain that was due primarily to a big bump on the often-volatile multi-family side, according to numbers released from the U.S. Commerce Department on March 17.
March 27, 2009
2 min read

Nationwide housing starts turned upward for the first time in eight months this February, posting a 22.2 percent gain that was due primarily to a big bump on the often-volatile multi-family side, according to numbers released from the U.S. Commerce Department on March 17.

“While welcome news, this gain only reflects a modest rebound from January, which was the worst month in history for new-home production,” said National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) Chief Economist David Crowe. “The majority of the gain was due to characteristic volatility on the multi-family side, while single-family housing starts were up just over one percent for the month.”

“Builders did pull a larger volume of single-family permits in February, suggesting a glimmer of hope for the prime home buying season, which is near at hand,” said NAHB Chairman Joe Robson, a home builder from Tulsa, Okla. “That said, we realize there’s a need to be extremely cautious in terms of new building activity going forward, because there’s still quite a lot of inventory out there that needs to be absorbed as foreclosures continue to flood the market in many areas.”

Total U.S. housing starts rose 22.2 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 583,000 units in February. This gain reflected an 82.3 percent surge to a 226,000-unit pace on the multi-family side and a 1.1 percent gain to a 357,000-unit pace on the single-family side. Building permits, which can be an indicator of future building activity, rose 3 percent overall to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 547,000 units in February. This reflected an 11 percent gain in single-family permits to 373,000 units and a 10.8 percent decline in multi-family permits to 174,000 units.

By region, building permits recorded a 27.6 percent gain in the Northeast, no change in the Midwest, a nearly 6 percent improvement in the South, and a 13.6 percent decline in the West in February.