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Housing starts flat
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August 19, 1997: 9:02 a.m. ET
New home construction unchanged in July, but Northeast makes strong gains
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NEW YORK (CNNfn) - Construction on new homes remained steady in July but the normally sluggish Northeast surged ahead of all other regions in home-building activity.
Housing starts were unchanged at an annualized rate of 1.447 million units in July, the Commerce Department said. The department also revised its June figure downward to a gain of 3.2 percent from a rise of 4.8 percent.
Applications for building permits, an indicator of future construction activity, rose 1.4 percent in July to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.42 million compared with 1.4 million in June.
"I think we're looking at a pretty strong housing market despite the fact that starts didn't rise," Roseanne Cahn, chief economist at CS First Boston, told CNNfn. However, she cautioned that the market is "far from runaway."
Single-family starts, which constitute 80 percent of the market, rose 2.7 percent to an annualized rate of 1.141 million units while multiple-dwelling starts were down 8.9 percent to a rate of 306,000.
Regionally, the Northeast led the way with housing starts up 41.4 percent in July to a 157,000 annual rate. The Northeast housing construction market tends to lag other regions, but last month it registered its highest level since November 1994.
Elsewhere, housing starts in the West were down 5.3 percent to a 338,000 rate, Midwest starts fell 3.7 percent to 289,000, and the normally robust South saw housing starts 2.4 percent lower at 663,000.
-- Randy Schultz
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