New construction activity picked up in July from June, the second of this week’s US housing market updates suggested.

I say “suggested” because these series can be volatile and it’s a mistake to read anything much into them beyond what they say about big-picture trends.

Currently, the trend in the market for newly-built single-family homes in America isn’t a trend — it’s a sideways meander, as illustrated below.

Although the overall pace of new construction rose 5.2% MoM, beating estimates, single-family starts rose a more pedestrian 2.8%, not even enough to recoup the prior month’s drop in the annualized rate, which sits at 939,000.

Multi-family construction rose nearly 12%, pushing the headline starts print up to 1.428 million annualized, the briskest pace since February.

The data comes a day on from yet another lackluster read on builder sentiment, which printed below the threshold separating net optimism from pessimism for the 16th month in a row.

The figure gives you a sense of the correlation between these two series — the NAHB sentiment headline and the government’s single-family starts tally, I mean.

Single-family permits were more or less stable in July, while permits on the whole slipped 2.8% to the lowest level in more than five years.

The most telling statistic from the release is this one:

A picture’s worth a thousand words, but just in case, here’s 13: Single-family homes under construction in July were the fewest since February 2021.

That’s a direct consequences of the challenges facing builders, fully two-thirds of whom resorted to some sort of incentives this month, according to the NAHB.

Meanwhile, Redfin’s Lily Katz noted on Monday that, “The typical home that went under contract in July sat on the market for 43 days — the longest July span since 2015 — as pending sales hit a two-year low.”