Housing Data (for December) Better than Expected

Wednesday, February 18th, 2026

As we work through the “back-9” of Q4 earnings season, we give way to prominent economic prints this holiday-shortened trading week. Particularly the latest Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) report, which we’ll have to wait for until Friday morning. This morning, Housing Starts for December came in nicely ahead of expectations: 1.404 million seasonally adjusted, annualized units. Analysts had been expecting 1.31 million, and the prior month’s newly posted 1.32 million shows growth month over month, as well.

Building Permits, a proxy for future starts, also outperformed expectations in December: 1.45 million seasonally adjusted, annualized units surpassed the 1.40 million anticipated, and even better than the newly posted 1.39 million reported for November, which had been delayed due to the government shutdown. These permits numbers, by the way, are still preliminary (aka subject to notable change). Key growth for the month was in Multi-family (aka rental) housing, which remains in higher demand from Single-family houses.

We’ll set aside that every delayed federal economic report since the latest government shutdown has been better than expected, and instead focus on the good news: we continue to see economic stabilization, particularly from a year-ago point which was beginning to show some concern for the pending tariff policy from the second Trump administration. Currently, we’re seeing inflation taper off, jobs increasing somewhat, trade deficits dwindle (based on the tariffs) and now homebuilding pick up pace.

Pre-market futures are up on this news, though they were already in the green ahead of the report hitting the tape after a lackluster start to the trading week. The AI narrative remains key, and until productivity begins to justify the massive spending in the new tech science, we’re likely to see investors weighing their concerns more deliberately before diving in at current levels.

Durable Goods Improve in December

Another delayed economic report — Durable Goods Orders, for December — has also outperformed expectations this morning, with a headline -1.4% an improvement over the -2.0% anticipated, and followed an upwardly revised +5.4% for November. This is the weakest print since October, but nothing to suggest a wider ebb and flow.

Ex-Transportation, we improve to +0.9% on this revised report — well ahead of the previous month’s downwardly revised +0.4%, and the strongest monthly figure since July of last year. Non-Defense, ex-aircraft — a proxy for “normal” enterprise spending — reached +0.6%, down 20 basis points (bps) from +0.8% the prior month, but double the +0.3% expected. Shipments tripled expectations to +0.9% for the month.

Pre-markets are rolling back their highs at this hour, but still generally in the green. The Dow is +23 points, the S&P 500 is +13 and the Nasdaq +63. The small-cap Russell 2000 has actually dipped a point into the red. Meanwhile, bond yields have ticked up (off low levels) as of the housing data: +4.07% on the 10-year and +3.46% on the 2-year.

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