Building Permits Fall Well Below Housing Starts For First Time in Over 2 Years

Building Permits Fall Well Below Housing Starts For First Time in Over 2 Years

Housing Starts, the jargon word used to refer to the inception of new residential construction, have a fairly logical relationship with building permits.  The latter tends to run a bit higher on average since the Great Financial Crisis, but there has been plenty of overlap.   Since the start of the pandemic, however, building permits opened up a clear lead on housing starts and never looked back--at least not until today's data came out.  Granted, there was one month in the middle of 2021 where starts eclipsed permits by a few thousand units, but that was nothing compared to today's gap of 85k.  Long story short, the orange line finally fell well below the blue line: Does this tell us anything we didn't already know about the housing market?  Not really.  Post-covid labor/ma