How should we interpret "Thousands of Units, Seasonally Adjusted Annual Rate" in that data? If you download the file, and sum the column you get 1,114,912, which would be 1.1 billion if the units are truly "Thousands of Units".
Here is a definition of "housing start" from another site:
"Housing starts is the name for a measurement of the total number of new private residences — single-family homes as well as condos, townhomes and apartments — that have broken ground."
So does the "Seasonally Adjusted Annual Rate", mean each is month is effectively showing the annual rate? So the January 1959 number of 1,657 means that if you extrapolated the month of January you'd get 1,657,000 houses in 1959? That probably makes the most sense(?). Then the average of 1,433 thousand units per year, over 64 years, yielding 91,715,126 total new units since 1959.
Comments
Here's 60 years of data on new housing starts:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/HOUST
I don't see a boom. Especially when you adjust for US population over that time, which has ~doubled.
How should we interpret "Thousands of Units, Seasonally Adjusted Annual Rate" in that data? If you download the file, and sum the column you get 1,114,912, which would be 1.1 billion if the units are truly "Thousands of Units".
Here is a definition of "housing start" from another site:
https://www.bankrate.com/real-estate/real-estate-housing-sta...
So does the "Seasonally Adjusted Annual Rate", mean each is month is effectively showing the annual rate? So the January 1959 number of 1,657 means that if you extrapolated the month of January you'd get 1,657,000 houses in 1959? That probably makes the most sense(?). Then the average of 1,433 thousand units per year, over 64 years, yielding 91,715,126 total new units since 1959.