Summary US builders started construction last month on single-family homes and apartments since July 2008.
The Commerce Department says housing starts jumped 3.6 percent in October from September to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 894,000. Single-family home construction dipped 0.2 percent.
Apartment construction, which is more volatile, rose 10 percent.
Applications for building permits, a sign of future construction, fell 2.7 percent to 866,000, after jumping 12 percent in September to a four-year high. Still, permit applications to build single-family homes rose to their highest level since July 2008.
Housing starts are 87 percent above the annual rate of 478,000 in April 2009, the recession low. That s still short of the 1.5 million annual rate considered healthy.
