Latest reports from the US show a renewed sense of hope in the housing starts department as figures showed a 22 percent rise in February from the month of January. New work on some 583,000 homes is seen to be a positive sign and indication that maybe the worst of the US housing slump is over.

While the warmer weather is partially responsible for the jump in new construction, analysts do not believe this new rate will be sustained in the future. Most of the new housing starts are apartments and condominiums.

Plus, there still are hundreds of thousands of unsold properties on the market, keeping the recession tight. Despite the non shifting property market, economists think that “the worst of the contraction may have passed.”

Another indication that the US decline has come to a slowdown are the increased retail figures for the month of February.

Narimah Behravesh, chief economist at IHS Global Insight was saying: “You get the sense from a lot of the data coming out now that we’re beginning to get to a bottom. We’re not quite there yet.”

However, despite these positive signs, future construction might not be taking off like a rocket as new building permits weren’t increasing as much as the new starts. They rose by 3 percent.

Projected figures indicate that starts are thought to be around the 450,000 houses annually.

The Northeast is Leading the Pack

A powerful 89 percent surge was seen in the US Northeast in new housing starts, giving them the run of the pack for sure. With low interest rates and plans to further reduce mortgage cost to help resurrect the US property market, the Obama administration is working hard on putting systems in place to make this happen in the near future.

As long as US banks can keep the credit flowing there might be hope. Since the recession start there were some 4.4 million job losses in the country.

Obama’s pledge of a $275 billion rescue plan is supposed to help current home owners keep their houses in order to avoid foreclosures.

In February alone foreclosures increased by a whopping 30 percent from the year previous. Since foreclosures are cheap properties to attain by investors, property developers are finding it hard to raise their capital for new development.

Photo credits: D.M Cook via Flickr

Related Posts

• Rippling effects of US subprime crisis in Japan
• Housing flu at the door step of France
• Economics: Investors go international after UK property slowdown
• Profiling the Recovery Part II: United Kingdom
• Profiling the Recovery Part I: America