New residential construction continued its spiral downward with today’s release of statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau and the Dept. of Housing and Urban Development.

Building permits for privately-owned housing units for June were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.4 million, a 7.5% loss from the previous month and a 25.2 percent loss from the previous year.

Housing starts in June rose slightly over May (2.3 percent ), but was 19.4% below the revised June 2006 rate of 1.8 million. Single-family housing starts in June were at a rate of 1.1 million. June rate for units in buildings with five units or more was 281,000.

New Residential Construction data for July 2007 will be released Thursday, Aug. 16 at 8:30 a.m. EDT.