December housing starts and building permits data on deck Thursday morning

Investors will parse through December housing starts and building permits data on Thursday to see whether activity in the sector has increased amid declining mortgage rates.
December housing starts, which measures the construction of new homes in the U.S., is expected to have dropped by a FactSet consensus estimate of 8.1% last month. That would be down from a rise of 14.8% the prior month.
Building permits, or the number of new housing units authorized in the U.S., is anticipated to have risen to a rate of 1.476 million units last month, according to a FactSet consensus estimate. That’s up from 1.467 million units previously. $S&P 500 Index (.SPX.US)$ $Dow Jones Industrial Average (.DJI.US)$ $Zillow-C (Z.US)$ $ARMOUR Residential REIT Inc (ARR.US)$