US Housing Starts Surge Past All Estimates in June

US housing starts blew past expectations in June, hitting an annualized rate of 1.427 million against the 1.310 million consensus estimate. The prior month's figure was revised higher to 1.199 million from 1.177 million.

The month-on-month jump was 19.0%, a sharp reversal from May's revised decline of 15.2%. Building permits, a forward-looking gauge, came in at 1.367 million, below the 1.400 million estimate and down 3.0% from the prior month's revised 1.410 million.

Housing completions also strengthened. The June pace was 1.392 million annualized, up 3.3% from May's revised 1.347 million and 1.5% above the year-ago level of 1.372 million. Single-family completions led the gain, rising 6.6% to 964,000 annualized from May's revised 904,000. Completions of buildings with five or more units ran at 413,000 annualized.