Some of the leading homebuilder stocks are falling this morning — Lennar Corp. (LEN) PulteGroup (PHM) ad D.R. Horton (DHI) are among the biggest decliners on the Standard & Poor’s 500 index. Part of that is doubtless a reaction to their climb of the past few days, but doubtless also due to Wednesday’s news that home building contracted last month:
Housing starts decreased 3% last month from October to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 861,000, the Commerce Department said Wednesday. Since November 2011, new home construction was up 21.6%.
Construction of single-family homes, which made up two-thirds of housing starts last month, dropped 4.1% in November to a rate of 565,000 units. Single-family construction was up 22.8% from a year earlier.
The figures were below expectations. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires had forecast overall housing starts would drop to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 865,000, which would have been a 3.2% decline from October’s previously reported figures.
But that may not necessarily be the whole picture — there was some good real estate construction news today, if you were looking for it.
Via Dave Lutz, a trader at Stifel Nicolaus, comes the following observations:
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