Single family housing starts rose nearly 3% in April after being steady for three months, adding more evidence that the single family market has bottomed and will begin to recover by the end of the summer. But multifamily starts dropped 40% to a record low 100,000 annual pace. The size of the drop was a surprise although multifamily starts are expected to average 135,000-140,000 through next year. Multifamily is a commercial real estate market, like office and retail, and suffers from same overcapacity and lack of credit access that hit all commercial markets late last year.

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