Housing starts in June rose 6.9% from May, reaching a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 760,000 units last month, the U.S. government said Wednesday.
Bloomberg news is calling it the largest uptick in starts in three years.
That is well above the revised May estimate of 711,000 starts and 23.6% above the 615,000 starts recorded in June of 2011, according to the U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Single-family housing starts alone rose 4.7% to 539,000 in June from 515,000 in May.
Building permits, on the other hand, fell 3.7% to 755,000 applications. Still, June permit activity remains 19.3% above June 2011 levels.
Housing completions in June hit a seasonally adjusted rate of 622,000, which is 2.6% above the May estimate of 606,000 and 7.2% above the June 2011 rate of 580,000 home completions. The completion rate for single-family homes rose 1.3% from May to June, hitting 470,000 completions last month.
The June completion rate for buildings with five or more units hit 134,000 total completions.
