US housing starts likely to have slipped slightly in July

US housing starts are expected to have dropped in July 2016. In the previous month, housing starts had surprised on the upside, growing almost 5 percent to 1.189 million units. This was a four-month high. The rise was unexpected as building permits had basically remained flat in the prior three months. That had hinted at little change in groundbreaking activity.

As the housing starts had performed better than expectations in June and given the fact that the NAHB’s Homebuilder index dropped by one point to 59, housing starts in the US is expected to have retrenched slightly in July, said Societe Generale in a research report. In spite of the increase witnessed in June, the six-month average of housing starts has remained flat since September 2015 at about 1.150 million units.