Housing Starts Rise Slightly in October

Housing construction inched up just 0.1% in October as builders boosted projects involving apartments and condos but scaled back work on single-family homes, the Commerce Department said. Many analysts had been expecting September’s strong 0.7% increase to be matched in October. Starts of single-family homes fell by a modest 0.2% in October, and starts of apartments, condos and other multifamily housing projects rose by 1.3%. By region, housing starts tumbled 16% in the West and declined 3.1% in the Northeast, but were up 7.6% in the South and rose 6.7% in the Midwest.