American housing starts surged 19 per cent in June to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1,427,000, the strongest month since March, yet almost none of the recovery reached the detached homes that feed the world’s largest lumber market. That is according to figures published on Friday by the US Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which show apartment construction accounting for the entire rise, while single-family starts slipped 0.2 per cent to an 895,000 annual pace.
Multifamily builders supplied the whole rebound, starting apartments and condos at a 532,000 annual rate, a more than 76 per cent jump from May, which ranked as the weakest month for American home building since 2020. The sector now stands 17.2 per cent ahead of June 2025, according to the National Association of Home Builders, which put single-family starts 3.2 per cent behind the same month last year.
Some of that apartment volume now goes up in wood, with oWow claiming a US$30 million saving compared with an equivalent concrete build on 1510 Webster Street in Oakland, the 19-storey post-and-plate high-rise completed as the tallest mass timber tower on the US West Coast. Nor is the shift confined to America, with mid-rise overtaking detached housing as the building type now driving Australia’s dwelling growth.
Detached homes are the segment that matters most to sawmillers, with each new single-family home absorbing close to 15,000 board feet of framing lumber and timber framing going into 94 per cent of the new houses completed across the US, according to the association’s analysis of Census data. June marked the third straight month in which builders started fewer of them.
“It will take time for these measures to take effect,” Bill Owens, the NAHB chairman and an Ohio home builder, said of the housing package that became law without Donald Trump’s signature this month, a bill carrying more than 40 provisions to boost supply through streamlined regulations and local zoning reform. Owens said elevated mortgage rates and higher construction financing costs continued to weaken builder confidence and housing demand.
Permits deepen the caution, with total authorisations falling 3 per cent to a 1,367,000 annual rate, single-family permits down 2.4 per cent to 871,000, and multifamily approvals dropping 4.2 per cent to 496,000, leaving 582,000 detached homes and 682,000 apartments under construction nationwide.
“Builders continue to face a difficult cost environment,” Danushka Nanayakkara-Skillington, the association’s assistant vice president for forecasting and analysis, said, with higher long-term Treasury yields keeping mortgage rates elevated while building material, transportation, and insurance costs climb.
It comes as Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies reported in June that combined duties and tariffs on Canadian softwood lumber near 35 per cent add at least $10,000 to the price of a new single-family home, and NAHB’s July builder survey shows 37 per cent of builders cutting prices.
Completions add to the imbalance, with builders finishing detached homes at a 964,000 annual rate, 69,000 ahead of the pace at which they are starting them, a gap that thins the forward workload for framing crews and their lumber suppliers. Year to date, total starts are 4.5 per cent higher in the Northeast, 1.2 per cent higher in the Midwest, and 1.7 per cent higher in the South, with the West 4.4 per cent lower.
