Unlike recent months when the Census Bureau reported some fireworks in the New Housing Starts and Permits data, the April update was relatively tame, and saw Starts rise from an upward revised 1,099K to 1,172K, beating expectations of a 1,125K print, mostly as a result of a 36K increase in multi-family units which however remain depressed below recent peaks from early 2015, which will likely stoke even higher asking rents, already at record highs across the nation.
But if starts were better than expected, then the future pipeline in the form of Housing Permits disappointed, with 1,116K units permitted for the month of April, below the 1,135K expected, if a rebound from last month's downward revised 1,077K.
The issue, as with the starts data, is the multi-family, aka rental units, barely rebounded and remained at severely depressed levels last seen in 2013: at 348K rental units permitted in April, this is a far cry from the recent highs of 598K in June.
One wonders if this is intentional, because based on soaring asking rents, as shown in the chart below, with Americans increasingly unable or unwilling to buy single-family units, rental prices have exploded to 8% Y/Y based on Census data.
Should multi-family permits and starts remain as depressed as it has been in recent months, we expect that this chart of soaring median asking rents will only accelerate in the near future, and will require a whole host of seasonal adjustments from making its way into the already bubbly CPI data.