Dive Brief:

• As economists anticipated a rise in housing starts in June and in building permits pulled, reality brought a different story – starts were down 9.3% to an annual pace of 893,000 and housing permits down 4.2%.
• However, those national numbers are the result of one region, the South, and one class, multifamily.
• The South took 158,000 units off the annual rate and an increase in single-family nationally was not enough to overcome multifamily, so the total slid while nonresidential starts, valued in dollars by Reed Construction Data, rose 34% over May to $32 billion.

Dive Insight:

The bottom line in the June numbers appears to be a substantial, "Huh?" Housing was supposed to soar this year, finally getting good traction after fishtailing a bit in 2013. As whole though, from single-family through urban apartment buildings, residential just doesn't seem able yet to get everyone moving to the same beat.