Housing Starts Continue Dive to 8-Year Low : Construction: July records sixth straight monthly decline. Fixed-rate 30-year mortgage rates fall briefly but creep up to 10.08%.

Housing starts continued to plummet in July, falling 2.6% to their lowest level since the last recession, the government said today. It was their sixth straight monthly decline.

The Commerce Department said starts of new homes and apartments totaled a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.15 million units after falling 2.2% in June.

The July decline pushed housing starts to their lowest level since an annual rate of 1.14 million got under way in September, 1982, when the economy was about to emerge from the 1981-82 recession.

The last time starts fell for six straight months was the June-November period of 1981.

Most analysts had expected a small increase in starts in July, noting relatively normal weather, mortgage rates that are falling into the single digits and falling inventories that could stimulate renewed building.

According to surveys by the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp., the cost of fixed-rate 30-year mortgages fell from 10.06% at the beginning of July to 9.98% toward month’s end. However, rates had edged back up to 10.08% by last Friday.

Inventories slipped from an 8.2-month supply at the May sales pace to a 7.5-month backlog in June, helped by an 8% jump in new home sales.

The rate of housing starts in July remained below the 1.38 million homes built in 1989 and the sluggish pace resulted in the loss of 51,000 construction jobs last month. For the first seven months of 1990, the building pace was 9.6% below the same period of 1989.

And few analysts foresee any surge in building for the remainder of the year, given continued relatively high mortgage rates, a slowing job market and consumer caution.

Applications for building permits, often a barometer of future housing activity, also slumped--down 2.6% to an annual rate of 1.08 million.

Construction of single-family units fell 1.4% to an annual rate of 873,000 units in July following a 1.3% decline a month earlier. Multi-family starts were down 6.5% to an annual rate of 275,000 units after a 4.9% drop in June.

All regions except the West participated in the slump. Starts in the West jumped 8.7%.

But starts fell 6.7% in the South, 5.5% in the Midwest and 5.3% in the Northeast.