The number of new housing starts on new homes exceeded analyst expectations for January, according to Bloomberg BusinessWeek.
A survey of 80 economists yielded a median average of 675,000 housing starts for the month, but when the Commerce Department released their report on January construction statistics, the actual figure was 699,000.
While housing starts have risen for several straight months, many pointed to the warm weather in January as one potential boost to the numbers. It was one of the mildest Januarys on record in quite some time, which may have caused builders to push up the start date of their projects with no snow to worry about.
The number of housing starts represented a modern gain over December, which saw 689,000 starts, and a sharp uptick compared to the same month in 2011 and 2010, which were estimated at 609,000 and 587,000, respectively.
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