According to yesterday’s data release, U.S. housing starts remained low in February 2008, at 1.065 million units. This was about the same level as the revised figure for January (1.071 million units), but was slightly ahead of the lowest monthly number so far in this cycle, which was a revised December 2007 figure of exactly 1.000 million units.

Completions continue to be considerably higher than starts. This means that the inventory of unsold units will continue to rise. Just about the only good news is that completions are coming down month to month (-8.8% for “total” and -9.4% for “singles”). This is a necessary prelude to an eventual pickup in starts.

In the meantime, however, building permits (an advance indicator of starts) stayed depressed. In fact, both total residential building permits and single-family permits were below starts …