U.S. New Housing Starts Spike

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The number of housing starts jumped above a 1 million annual rate in March, a 46 percent increase from the same month a year ago.

The 1.036 million annual rate of privately-owned housing starts -- the highest rate since 2008 -- is a 7 percent increase from February, according to the latest data from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The overall housing starts data was bolstered by a rate of 392,000 starts of multi-family buildings with five or more units.

Eighty analysts polled by Bloomberg predicted 930,000 housing starts for the month.

"Whether it's driven by demand from homebuyers or renters, it doesn't really matter because it's roofs over peoples' heads," Aneta Markowska, chief U.S. economist at Societe Generale, told Bloomberg. "There's still a lot of room for improvement in housing, both for activity and for prices. This is critical for the U.S. economy."

But the news was not all good. The annual rate of building permits--an indicator of future construction--was down 3.9 percent from February, although still 17.3 percent above March of 2012.

Privately-owned housing completions in March were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 800,000. That's an 11 percent increase from February and 36.3 percent above a year ago.

But there are still issues in the market. The National Association of Home Builders announced yesterday that builders' confidence is sliding, due to rising costs and the availability of buildable land.