Some good news was recently released by the U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development that should put a smile on the faces of those in the Atlanta real estate industry. The two organizations recently announced that privately-owned housing starts went up roughly 14.6 percent in January.

This fact is part of a larger report that was released earlier this month and compares figures from December 2010 to those from January 2011. While the other statistics aren’t nearly as cheery, the optimist in all of us will say that they could always be worse. In fact, the 596,000 starts in January were more than economists at Bloomberg News and MarketWatch had estimated. Here are some of the topics that were addressed:

• Privately-owned housing units authorized by building permits fell from 627,000 in December to 562,000 in January (10.4 percent)
• Single-family housing units authorized by building permits fell from 442,000 in December to 421,000 in January (4.8 percent)
• Privately owned housing starts increased from 520,000 in December to 596,000 in January (14.6 percent)
• Single-family housing starts fell only one percent from 417,000 in December to 413,000 in January
• Privately-owned housing completions fell from 566,000 in December to 512,000 in January (9.5 percent)
• Single-family housing completions fell from 460,000 in December to 512,000 in January (7 percent)

To see the full report with more detailed information, visit http://www.census.gov/const/www/newresconstindex.html.