Housing starts to suffer permanent loss from COVID

Single-family housing starts were in a strong position prior to the arrival of the coronavirus and builders would, in normal circumstances, look through what is anticipated to be a temporary dip in demand. But disruption to supply chains and the availability of labour means we expect starts will fall to 750,000 annualised in the second quarter. Starts will then recover, but a shortage of labour and materials means they won’t make up all the loss of output, leaving starts at end-2021 7% below our previous forecast.