Private Residential Construction Spending Rising in April

After declining 0.4% in March, private residential building spending increased 0.1% in April, according to a post from National Association of Home Builders (NAHB).

The seasonally corrected annual rate came out at $890.4 billion.

Comparatively to a year ago, total private residential building investment is 8% higher.

More single-family building and upgrades help to explain this monthly rise in total construction spending.

Spending on single-family homes edged up 0.1% in April, the tenth straight month of growth.

Spending on single-family building was 20.4% greater than a year before.

Though it was 3.5% less than a year ago, private residential improvement spending rose 0.3% in April.

Following a dip of 0.2% in the previous month, multifamily building expenditure dropped 0.3% in April.

Spending on multifamily building, however, was 2.3% more than a year earlier as a lot of multifamily buildings are still under development.

Still, once a high degree of units under development is reached, multifamily building expenditure will drop in the quarters ahead.

The graph below shows the NAHB building spending index; March 2000 is the basis.

Under the weight of supply-chain problems and rising interest rates, the indicator shows how steadily spending on single-family building grew since May 2023.

While upgrade spending rate has dropped since mid-2022, multifamily building activity has slowed since late 2023.

Spending on private nonresidential building increased by 8.3% compared one year before.

Higher spending for the class of manufacturing ($33.2 billion) dominated the annual private nonresidential spending growth; followed by the electricity category ($0.8 billion).

[Read more about this topic on Eyeonhousing.org]