Thursday January 31, 05:53 AM
Japan housing starts fall 19.2 percent in December on tighter building rules
TOKYO (Thomson Financial) - Housing starts in Japan fell 19.2 percent to 87,214 units in December from a year earlier as tighter safety rules introduced in June continued to discourage construction companies, data from the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure
and Transport showed Thursday.
The fall was slightly deeper than the 18.2 percent decline projected by economists, but was slower compared to the previous months.
Housing starts fell 27 percent in November (Frankfurt: A0S9N7 - news) , 35 percent in October and 44.0 percent in September, 43.3 percent in August and 23.4 percent in July.
The revised Construction Standard Law has made the certification of building blueprints stricter and follows revelations that lax screening procedures had made it possible for construction plans with fake anti-seismic data to be approved.
But the annualized rate of housing starts continued its recovery to 1.05 million units in December from 956,000 units in November, 857,000 units in October, 730,000 in September and 736,000 in August.
Last month, starts on houses for rent fell 14.4 percent from a year earlier to 39,936 units, down for the sixth straight month.
Starts on owner-occupied houses dropped 6.0 percent to 25,170, down for the 11th consecutive month, while starts on condominiums declined 35.5 percent to 21,586, the sixth straight monthly fall.
For all of 2007, housing starts in Japan fell 17.8 percent to 1.06 million units from the previous year.
(1 US dollar = 106.52 yen)
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