Housing Numbers Come in Mixed
Housing Starts, Building Permits Point to Big Differences
Last month, Housing Starts came in at multi-month highs to 1.43 million seasonally adjusted, annualized units — well above the 1.29 million projected and the upwardly revised 1.36 million from the previous month. It's the highest level since February and the third-best month of the past 12, even as July mortgage rates remained high.
Building Permits, on the other hand, came in much lower than estimated: 1.35 million, beneath the 1.39 million analysts were looking for and the identical downwardly revised 1.39 million from the prior month. It's the fourth-straight monthly downward move. The last time we saw new permits — a proxy for future housing starts — this low, we were in the Covid pandemic.
The answers here are clear once we look beneath the surface: Multi-family housing grew by a whopping +11.6% month over month, +27% year over year. This, even with massive supply on the market (relative to single-family housing supply, anyway), which strongly suggests demand for apartment/condo living is still very high.
Compare this with Single-family housing, which is still positive overall, but well off the Multi-family pace: +2.8% month over month and +8% year over year. As we mentioned, July mortgage rates were higher than they are currently, which not only keeps new potential single-family homebuyers on the sidelines, but it also keeps existing home sales at very low levels. We'll see new Existing Home Sales numbers for July this Thursday morning.
Home Depot Posts Slight Q2 Misses
Speaking of housing development, home improvement retail giant Home Depot HD has released Q2 results ahead of today's opening bell, and the company came up slightly short on both top and bottom lines. Earnings of $4.68 per share were 3 cents short of the Zacks consensus, for a -0.64% earnings surprise. It's also the second-straight earnings miss for Home Depot.
Revenues of $45.38 billion in the quarter was also a slight miss from expectations, by -0.5%, though still up nearly +5% year over year. The company also kept its fiscal year guidance in place, which has helped boost the stock +1.6% in today's early trading. This is more than double what the shares have earned year to date.
What to Expect from the Stock Market Today
Fed Vice Chair Michelle Bowman — one of two dissenters at the last Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting last month, as she voted for a 25 basis point (bps) interest rate cut — makes a couple of appearances today. This is a day ahead of the release of the minutes from that FOMC meeting. Analysts will be parsing language and reading tea leaves to depict how likely a rate cut may be coming at the next FOMC meeting September 16 and 17.
The housing narrative continues after today's close, when luxury homebuilder Toll Brothers TOL reports fiscal Q3 earnings results. Estimates are for a slight year-over-year pullback on the bottom line (-0.28%) on revenues +4.56% higher than the year-ago quarter. Toll Brothers has beaten earnings estimates in three of the past four quarters.
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