Residential construction dips after 16% January jump start.

Following the warmest January on record that helped spur a 16% jump in new-home construction, the housing market showed signs of cooling in February, with total housing starts down 7.9% for the month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 2.12 million.

Single-family home construction dipped 2.3% to 1.8 million units.

Multi-family starts fell 30.4% to 320,000 units after posting an unsustainably high level of 460,000 units in January.

"The underlying market fundamentals remain solid," said David Pressly, president of the National Association of Home Builders and a home builder from Statesville, N.C.

"Job and income growth are moving ahead at healthy levels. Today's starts numbers are another indicator that points towards an orderly cooling down process for the housing market in 2006."

"So far this year, housing starts have received a boost from unusually mild winter weather, even in February, and we expect to see these numbers move further down in the months ahead," said NAHB chief economist David Seiders. "Indicators that measure housing demand--home sales, applications for home mortgages and our own survey of single-family builders--show that the cooling process has begun. Further more, single-family permits, which are less affected by weather than single-family starts, have been trailing down gradually from their highs last fall."

Seiders added that the evolving slowdown is actually a healthy development and should not lead to any major contraction in the housing markets.

"Last year's record-level of housing starts and double-digit price appreciation were unsustainable and encouraged many investors and speculators to enter the market," he said.

"With demand slowing, we expect to see price appreciation also falling back into the single-digit range, and that will discourage short-term speculators from jumping into the market. We anticipate another solid year for housing in 2006, with new-home construction and new home sales down about 7% from last year's all time highs."

Regionally, construction of new homes and apartments for the month was down 23.5% in the Northeast, 10.4% in the Midwest and 11.2% in the South.

Starts posted a 7.9% gain in the West.

Issuance of total building permits fell 3.2% to a seasonably adjusted annual rate of 2.145 million units in February. Single-family permit issuance was down 3% to 1.639 million units, while multifamily permit issuance registered a 1.1% gain to 532,000 units.