Housing Starts (September 2015)

- Starts seasonally adjusted, annualized  1,206,000. Previous was 1,132,000

- Permits seasonally adjusted, annualized  1,103,000. Previous was 1,161,000

While the gain is good because it provides needed housing it is less encouraging for folks in the mortgage business because almost all of the gain is in multi-family.  Construction of SFR was up 0.4% month-on-month.  Building Permits for SFR was down 0.3%. This could  be due to the fact that jobs and people are moving into cities  where multi-family construction is more prevalent.  It may also be the case that fewer people can afford homes but that is something which needs to be looked at on a longer scale than month-to-month.

 

Redbook Chain Store Sales (week ended 10/17/2015)

- Chain Store Sales year/year  +1.3%. Previous was +1.1%.

Chain Store sales are soft.  This reflects, in part, a trend to online shopping.  Some Chain Stores are facing serious issues as witnessed by Wal-Mart's report of last week.  It should also be noted that this particular piece of data has a lot of weekly variation due to thing such as holidays, sales, and weather.