It’s not quite time to do a victory dance for the housing market, but the December 20th report from the U.S. Census Bureau on October housing starts extends the recent string of good news on the residential construction front:

• Total housing starts rose 9.3%, from October’s revised 627,000 to 685,000 in November (seasonally adjusted annual rate)
• Single-family starts continued their general trend upward, rising 2.3% to 447,000
• Multifamily starts remained a bright spot, jumping 25.3% to 238,000

Since multifamily starts tend to be volatile from month to month, it is worth looking at their three-month moving average, which has risen in nine of the last eleven months. The November average was 215,000, up 13.8% from October’s 189,000, and was the first time the average has been above 200,000 since November 2008.
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