Highlights include D.R. Horton, Inc. (DHI), Weyerhaeuser Co. (WY), Masco Corp. (MAS) and Whirlpool Corp. (WHR).

Housing starts and permits is one area where "bad news" is really good news. Falling starts and permits will allow the huge inventory overhang of houses to be worked off.

This is not without a cost, however -- it means that the Residential Investment part of GDP is off to a very weak start for the second quarter, and this despite it already being the smallest share of GDP on record in the first quarter.

In April, building permits fell to a Seasonally Adjusted Annual Rate (SAAR) of 494,000, down 3.3% from March and 50.2% below April 2008 levels. This suggests that housing starts will be weak again in May. Most of the decline in permits came from multi-unit structures, aka Apartments and Condos, which plunged 21.6% for the month and are down 66.2% from a year ago.

Single family permits actually rose 3.6% and are down "only" 42.3% from a year ago. Regionally, total permits fell the most in the Northeast with a 7.1% drop, followed by declines of 4.8% in the Midwest and 3.4% in the all-important South region. In the West permits, were unchanged from last month. On a year-over-year basis, things tend to even out more regionally, with declines ranging from 52.3% in the West to 49.1% in the South.

Turning to Starts, they plunged 12.8% from last month to just 458,000, which as the graph below shows (larger version available at http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/) is a record low. Starts are 54.2% below a year ago. However, as with Permits, the damage was concentrated in multi-family structures, dropping an astounding 42.2% in the month and down 74.8% on a year-over-year basis. Single family starts were actually up 2.8% nationwide for the month, but are down 45.6% from a year ago.

Regionally, there were huge disparities (keep in mind that particularly at the regional level the numbers are subject to huge margins of error and can be significantly revised later -- the confidence intervals are much smaller for permits than they are for starts). The Northeast was by far the hardest hit, with starts plunging 30.6% for the month and down 45.7% year over year. The Midwest and the South were also hit hard with monthly drops of 21.4% and 21.1%, respectively. The West was the anomaly, with starts jumping 42.5% on the month.

As with permits, the disparities are much less on a year-over-year basis.