U.S. new home starts increased in September on a sharp gain in single-family house construction while building permits climbed, indicating residential building had plenty of momentum at the end of the third quarter.
Residential starts increased 1.9% to a 1.42 million annualized rate from a month earlier, according to a government report released Tuesday. The median forecast in a Bloomberg survey of economists called for a 1.47 million pace. Applications to build, a proxy for future construction, rose 5.2% to a 1.55 million rate, the fastest since 2007 and topping forecasts.
