US housing starts, monthly
Monthly US housing-starts intelligence panel, 1959-01 onward: total new privately-owned housing units started (thousands of units, seasonally adjusted annual rate; FRED HOUST, U.S. Census Bureau and U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, New Residential Construction release, redistributed keyless via FRED fredgraph.csv). Carries 1-month and 12-month changes (levels and percents), the 3-month annualized percent change, and a contraction_flag marking months with fewer starts than a year earlier. Method caveats: Census revises history with each vintage (kept as published, never back-filled); in-window nulls fail loudly, never imputed. Who joins this: home-improvement merchants join demand on year_month + country_code and use starts_yoy_pct / contraction_flag as housing-demand features; sales teams weight real-estate-adjacent pipeline by the contraction regime.
- Rows
- 812
- Columns
- 12
- Source cadence
- Monthly
- Last refreshed
- Sep 30, 2026
- Theme
- housing
| Column | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| month_start | date | First day of the calendar month. (unit: date) |
| year_month | string | Calendar month as YYYY-MM (panel join key). (unit: string) |
| country | string | Country name (shared normalization layer). (unit: string) |
| country_code | string | ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 country code (USA). (unit: string) |
| starts_thousands | float | New housing units started (FRED HOUST; Census/HUD New Residential Construction). (unit: thousands of units, SAAR) |
| starts_mom_thousands | float | 1-month change in the level (null for the first panel month). (unit: thousands of units) |
| starts_mom_pct | float | 1-month percent change in the level (null for the first panel month). (unit: percent) |
| starts_yoy_thousands | float | 12-month change in the level (null for the first panel year). (unit: thousands of units) |
| starts_yoy_pct | float | 12-month percent change in the level (null for the first panel year). (unit: percent) |
| starts_3m_ann_pct | float | 3-month annualized percent change in the level (null for the first 3 panel months). (unit: percent) |
| contraction_flag | integer | 1 when 12-month growth is negative (a lower level than a year earlier), else 0. (unit: flag) |
| row_hash | string | Deterministic 16-hex sha256 of year_month + the level (idempotency key). (unit: string) |
First 10 sample rows — a preview, not the complete dataset.
| month_start | year_month | country | country_code | starts_thousands | starts_mom_thousands | starts_mom_pct | starts_yoy_thousands | starts_yoy_pct | starts_3m_ann_pct | contraction_flag | row_hash |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1959-01-01 | 1959-01 | United States | USA | 1,657 | — | — | — | — | — | 0 | 8e8222df7411cc7b |
| 1959-02-01 | 1959-02 | United States | USA | 1,667 | 10 | 0.604 | — | — | — | 0 | 617737158704d47c |
| 1959-03-01 | 1959-03 | United States | USA | 1,620 | -47 | -2.819 | — | — | — | 0 | 185af20d4d0f3bd9 |
| 1959-04-01 | 1959-04 | United States | USA | 1,590 | -30 | -1.852 | — | — | -15.219 | 0 | c897592e28bae101 |
| 1959-05-01 | 1959-05 | United States | USA | 1,498 | -92 | -5.786 | — | — | -34.791 | 0 | 39e997831dbafb9b |
| 1959-06-01 | 1959-06 | United States | USA | 1,503 | 5 | 0.334 | — | — | -25.907 | 0 | 0574c8909f501ef4 |
| 1959-07-01 | 1959-07 | United States | USA | 1,547 | 44 | 2.927 | — | — | -10.387 | 0 | d3625fa53255e8f5 |
| 1959-08-01 | 1959-08 | United States | USA | 1,430 | -117 | -7.563 | — | — | -16.958 | 0 | adbbc0643b0bc7e4 |
| 1959-09-01 | 1959-09 | United States | USA | 1,540 | 110 | 7.692 | — | — | 10.217 | 0 | 4ec2042d0015abc3 |
| 1959-10-01 | 1959-10 | United States | USA | 1,355 | -185 | -12.013 | — | — | -41.143 | 0 | 7ed02c5a06a52aa3 |
Profiled Sep 30, 2026 from snapshot 20260930T030510Z-b59ee9a0d182
Measured- Completeness
- 99.7%
- Rows
- 812
- Columns
- 12
- Columns with gaps
- 5
| Column | Missing | Distinct | Range | Distribution |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| month_startdate | 0% | 886 | Jan 1, 1959 → Aug 1, 2026 | — |
| year_monthvarchar | 0% | 821 | — |
|
| countryvarchar | 0% | 1 | — |
|
| country_codevarchar | 0% | 1 | — |
|
| starts_thousandsdouble | 0% | 838 | 478 → 2,494median 1,448 | 18 outside 1st–99th percentile |
| starts_mom_thousandsdouble | 0.12% | 357 | -597 → 416median 2 | 18 outside 1st–99th percentile |
| starts_mom_pctdouble | 0.12% | 863 | -26.42 → 29.27median 0.1612 | 18 outside 1st–99th percentile |
| starts_yoy_thousandsdouble | 1.5% | 635 | -1,030 → 864median 21 | 16 outside 1st–99th percentile |
| starts_yoy_pctdouble | 1.5% | 886 | -54.8 → 96.19median 1.53 | 16 outside 1st–99th percentile |
| starts_3m_ann_pctdouble | 0.37% | 835 | -87.71 → 606.5median 2.29 | 18 outside 1st–99th percentile |
| contraction_flagbigint | 0% | 2 | 0 → 1median 0 | |
| row_hashvarchar | 0% | 935 | — |
|
- Current
20260930T030510Z-b59ee9a0d182 · sha256 b59ee9a0d182…
812 rows · first snapshot
Point any LLM at the metadata endpoint — the documentation above is machine-readable too (JSON-LD + Croissant).
curl "https://datazimuts.com/v1/datasets/fred_housing_starts_sales_intel/us_housing_starts_monthly" | jq '{title, rows, columns_count, license}'import requests
ds = requests.get("https://datazimuts.com/v1/datasets/fred_housing_starts_sales_intel/us_housing_starts_monthly").json()
print(ds["title"], ds["rows"], "rows")
# Sample rows for an LLM context window
for row in ds.get("sample_rows", [])[:5]:
print(row)API endpoint: https://datazimuts.com/v1/datasets/fred_housing_starts_sales_intel/us_housing_starts_monthly
Tip: fetch /llms.txt for the full machine-readable catalog.
Where this data comes from and what was made from it. Other people's work shows as counts; only shared projects are named.
Cite this snapshot
Pinned to snapshot 20260930T030510Z-b59ee9a0d182 and its content hash, so readers get exactly the data you used.
US Housing Starts & New-Home Sales Intelligence (FRED, keyless). (2026). US housing starts, monthly [Data set, snapshot 20260930T030510Z-b59ee9a0d182, sha256 b59ee9a0d182]. Datazimuts. Retrieved 2026-09-30, from https://datazimuts.com/en/datasets/fred_housing_starts_sales_intel/us_housing_starts_monthly?snapshot=20260930T030510Z-b59ee9a0d182
@misc{dz_fred_housing_starts_sales_intel_us_housi_b59ee9a0,
title = {{US housing starts, monthly}},
author = {{US Housing Starts \& New-Home Sales Intelligence (FRED, keyless)}},
year = {2026},
publisher = {Datazimuts},
howpublished = {\url{https://datazimuts.com/en/datasets/fred_housing_starts_sales_intel/us_housing_starts_monthly?snapshot=20260930T030510Z-b59ee9a0d182}},
note = {Snapshot 20260930T030510Z-b59ee9a0d182, sha256 b59ee9a0d182663aa71a294e8faa689eb103f50327df47aa71175e30d6fc1709; accessed 2026-09-30}
}Embed a table or a chart
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<iframe src="https://datazimuts.com/embed/chart?dataset=fred_housing_starts_sales_intel%2Fus_housing_starts_monthly&lang=en&theme=auto&snapshot=20260930T030510Z-b59ee9a0d182&x=year_month&y=starts_thousands&agg=avg" title="US housing starts, monthly" width="100%" height="380" style="border:0" loading="lazy"></iframe>
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