January housing-start and housing-permit numbers the Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development gave almost everyone something smile about Thursday as long as they raised their eyes from December and took a longer view.

Permits for single-family building permits and for buildings with two to four units and for those with least five units all zoomed, especially the largest buildings, which were up 61.2% from January 2011. Single-family was up 6.2% on the year and the medium-sized buildings rose 15 percent. Only the two-to-four category was below December's numbers, down 4.2 percent.

The results put permits on a pace to hit 676,000 this year.

Single-family housing starts last month were at an annualized pace of 699,000, up 16.2% from the pace a year before.

Construction of buildings with five or more units might have been running down energy it got earlier than the other sectors. The pace was down 6.4% from January 2011, although it spiked 14.4 percent from December.

Builderonline.com offered a cautionary note about Mother Nature's contribution to the increases.

"Last month was the fourth warmest January on record since 1895 and one of the driest, points out Patrick Newport, U.S. economist at IHS Global Insight. And while the weather may be helping the numbers now, he says, the industry should expect some payback in March and April," the website's Claire Easley wrote.

The Wall Street Journal had a sobering view, too.

"According to Conference Board data, the percentage of consumers planning to buy a home has increased over the past year. But the share of possible buyers remains low and any improvement has come in plans to buy an existing home, not a new house," the paper said.