Total construction spending was up in April to 1524.2 billion, according to the latest data from the Census Bureau (CB)
- M-O-M: Spending month-over-month was up 0.2% when compared to March’s revised numbers.
- Y-O-Y: Despite the small climb in monthly data, spending was up 9.8% year-over-year thanks to the impact of COVID-19 lockdowns.
Some very good news for the real estate community was the rise in residential construction. Residential construction was up 1.0% month-over-month to $729.2 billion in April 2021. Single-family construction saw even bigger gains…
- M-O-M: New single-family construction was up 1.3% to 786 million in April of 2021.
- Y-O-Y: New single-family construction was up 39.6% year-over-year thanks to COVID-19 lockdowns impacting construction the same time a year ago.
This was the second month in a row of gains in construction spending. Lumber prices have fallen a bit and that could be encouraging builders to build. Unfortunately, we are going to need to see bigger jumps than this to counter the current 3.8 million home inventory deficit.