WASHINGTON, June 1 (Reuters) – U.S. construction spending increased more than expected in April, boosted by single-family homebuilding, though rising mortgage rates amid \u200cthe war with Iran continued to cast a shadow over the housing \u200cmarket.<\/p>\n
The Commerce Department’s Census Bureau said on Monday that construction spending rose 0.4% after a downwardly \u200brevised 0.2% increase in March. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast construction spending gaining 0.2% after a previously reported 0.6% rise in March.<\/p>\n
Construction spending increased 0.9% on a year-over-year basis in April. Spending on private construction projects advanced 0.4% after \u200cgaining 0.2% in the prior \u2060month.<\/p>\n
Investment in residential construction climbed 0.8% after rising 0.6% in March. Spending on new single-family housing projects increased 1.4%.<\/p>\n
Mortgage rates \u2060have shot up as the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran stoked inflation. The popular 30-year fixed mortgage rate averaged 6.53% last week, a nine-month high, data from mortgage finance \u200bagency \u200bFreddie Mac showed. It averaged 5.98% at \u200bthe end of February, when the \u200cwar started, as Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae expanded purchases of mortgage-backed securities.<\/p>\n
Rising mortgage rates are weighing on demand for housing and constraining builders’ ability to break ground on new single-family housing projects. Builders are also facing higher costs from tariffs, land and labor shortages.<\/p>\n
Spending on multi-family housing units, which account for \u200ca small share of the housing market, \u200bfell 0.3% in April.<\/p>\n
Investment in private nonresidential structures \u200bsuch as power plants and \u200bfactories fell 0.2% in April. Spending on nonresidential structures has \u200ccontracted for nine straight quarters, despite a \u200bsurge in the \u200bconstruction of data centers to support artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n
Investment in public construction projects increased 0.4% after rising 0.2% in March. State and local government construction \u200bspending edged up 0.1% \u200cin April while outlays on federal government projects jumped 4.8%, likely \u200brelated to the building of detention centers amid an immigration crackdown.<\/p>\n
(Reporting \u200bby Lucia Mutikani; Editing by Andrea Ricci )<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON, June 1 (Reuters) – U.S. construction spending increased more than expected in April, boosted by single-family homebuilding,…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":837378,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[12],"tags":[64,9886,265720,79,306817,14606,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-837377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-construction","tag-construction-spending","tag-economy","tag-housing-projects","tag-mortgage-rates","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116676357546508835","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/837377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=837377"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/837377\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/837378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=837377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=837377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=837377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}