Total new housing starts have dropped significantly. April figures show that the number of starts is down 54.2 percent from April, 2008. There were only 458,000 homes started in the month. The Commerce Department reports that new housing starts are dropped at levels not seen since 1959. New building permits, another indicator of the health of the construction market, which indicate future building, were also down. They dropped 3.3 percent to 494,000 units, the lowest since records started in January 1960. The have continued downward from 511,000 units in March. That was well below analysts’ estimates of 530,000 units.

Compared to the same period a year-ago, building permits have plunged 50.2 percent.
.
This is not bad news for the industry as a whole. It is a fact that builders and those in construction are hurting, as well as the ripple effect on building products and related services, but for the overall market this actually is positive direction. The lack of new construction is allowing the excess inventory to be absorbed, which is what we all need to happen right now.

It is important to make this critical distinction, however. According to the interpretation from the National Association of Home Builders, multifamily units were the hardest hit.
Production of single-family homes actually edged upward in April as builders responded to improving conditions for new-home buyers, according to newly released figures by the U.S. Commerce Department. While overall starts fell 12.8 percent to a record-low seasonally adjusted annual pace of 458,000 units, the decline was entirely confined to the multifamily sector, where production fell 46 percent to a 90,000-unit pace for the month, while single-family starts posted a 2.8 percent gain to 368,000 units.