When housing starts and building permits were reported earlier this week it was good news for the housing market and overall economy in general, but might not be such good news for REITs focused on residential housing. That includes apartment REITs, single-family home REITs, and manufactured housing REITs as well.
New building permits were reported at an annualized rate of 1.296M permits, which was slightly above the consensus forecast of 1.29M. Housing starts were reported at 1.235M – above the consensus of 1.205M. Both are still below the recent high but have stabilized after a