After an unexpected decline in January, Housing Starts and Building Permits were expected to rebound modestly in February, but they didn't - they exploded back with Starts up 9.8% MoM and Permits up 13.8% MoM...

Source: Bloomberg

Housing Starts soared thanks to a 24.1% explosion in multi-fam/rental starts (Single-family rose only 1.1%)...

Source: Bloomberg

Total Multifamilty Starts increased from 490K to 608K SAAR, the highest since April 2022; Single-family meanwhile continue to be at a 3 year low

On the permits side, single family rose 7.6% from 722K to 777K SAAR, but again the big surge was in Multi-family, which soared from 563K to 700K SAAR, up 24.3%

It was the third highest print in multi-family permits history.

This does not lok like the kind of behavior that Jay Powell was hoping for...