Housing starts continued to fall in March from their January peak, the government reported Tuesday, but many analysts said the decline had bottomed out. The Commerce Department reported that starts of new homes and apartments fell 9.3 percent last month, to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.32 million units _ a pace many analysts said probably would continue. ``We might see levels like we had in March during most of the rest of the year,'' said economist Thomas Holloway of the Mortgage Bankers Association. The drop was the sharpest since a 12.4 percent plunge in January 1989, but was expected after starts jumped 23.2 percent to an annual rate of 1.57 million units during January's record warm weather. They slipped to 1.46 million in February, still well above the level of the last 11 months of 1989 as unusually warm weather continued. ``It isn't so much that housing is plunging as it is a correction in the data to the bulge earlier this year which couldn't be sustained,'' said Allen Sinai, chief economist for The Boston Co. David Berson, chief economist for the Federal National Mortgage Association, noted that all of the decline was in single-family homes, which fell 12 percent to an annual rate of 1.02 million units. Nevertheless, Berson added, the March rate ``still is a very good number, better than most months of 1989.'' Single-family starts totaled 1 million last year. On the other hand, multifamily starts gained 0.9 percent to an annual rate of 306,000 _ ``up a tad, but still at an abysmally low number,'' said David Seiders, chief economist for the National Association of Home Builders. Apartment starts plunged 35.3 percent in February after a 37.1 percent jump the previous month. In addition to the weather, analysts had attributed the January gain to builders wanting to get construction under way before expensive new regulations designed to make apartments more accessible to the handicapped went into effect. Seiders blamed the ``incredible weakness'' in apartment starts on fair housing regulations for the handicapped that he said would add as much as $3,000 to the cost of multifamily units and on a construction credit crunch brought on by the August savings and loan bailout law. The biggest decline in starts was experienced the Northeast, where the real estate industry has been in the doldrums in recent months. They were down 37.8 percent, to 138,000 units, after advancing 32.1 percent in February. ``We though we had seen hopeful signs'' in the Northeast, Seiders said, ``but it clearly was a temporary, weather-based effect. Now it's showing it is the weakest housing component in the country.'' Other declines were posted in the South, down 11.5 percent to 524,000 units, and the West, down 0.5 percent to 376,000 units. The Midwest registered the only gain, up 6.8 percent to 293,000 units. Applications for building permits, often a barometer of future housing activity, fell 7.6 percent after dropping 25.2 percent the previous month. The 1.21 million applications were the lowest since 1.15 million permits were sought in October 1982.
