Every two weeks, Oldcastle Building Solutions Business Intelligence prepares a report focused on understanding and analyzing construction market data and trends.
This in-depth report is developed primarily for internal distribution, but Oldcastle Building Solutions exists to inform construction professionals like you, so we're making this report available for anyone who's interested in reading it.
What's New In This Report?
Highlights
The ABI remained above 50 (neutral) in December 2017 at 52.9 points. The new project inquiries component saw gains from the previous month, while design contract fell slightly. All regions and sectors remained above 50, except the Northeast at 49.4.
In January 2018, the HMI fell to 72, a decline by 2 points from the high of 74 in December 2017. The present sales, future sales, and traffic components also saw monthly declines, but were up from last year’s values.
Construction Update
In December 2017, housing permits reflected an annual rate of 1.3M, 2.8% above its year-ago rate. Over the year, Single Family permits are up 6.1%, while Multi-Family permits are down 3.4%.
Housing starts in December 2017 were 6.0% below their year-ago rate. Single Family was up 3.5% at 836K starts and Multi-Family was down 22.6% at 356K starts.
625K new Single Family homes were sold in December 2017, 14.1% above the year-ago rate.
Economic Update
In January 2018, the unemployment rate held steady at 4.1% after adding 200K jobs. The Construction Industry added 36K jobs in the month, after adding 33K in December 2017.
The advanced estimate of real GDP growth for Q4 2017 was 2.6%, a slight decline from 3.2% growth seen in third quarter.
