There were 11 percent fewer housing starts in May than in April, but the May number is about 5 percent higher than what was recorded in the same month in 2014. The number of housing completions in May is only about 5 percent better than April, but it's 14.5 percent higher than the same month one year earlier.

The month-to-month results might be lackluster, but residential construction data for May shows solid gains when compared to the same time frame from a year ago.

Nearly 1.3 million building permits were authorized for all privately owned housing in May, which combines single- and multi-family projects, the U.S. Census Bureau said in its most recent monthly report.

This is about 12 percent higher than the 1.1 million permits issued in April "?u and a 25.4 percent jump over the slightly more than one million permits issued in May 2014.

Roughly 683,000 permits were authorized for single-family homes alone in May, or 2.6 percent more than the revised April figure of 666,000.

Total housing starts in May stood at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of just over one million. This is about 11 percent below the revised April figure of 1.1 million "?u but just a tad better than 5 percent above the May 2014 rate of 986,000.

Single-family housing starts alone stood at 680,000, or 5.4 percent below the revised April figure of 719,000.

There were a little more than one million housing completions documented in May. This represents a nearly 5 percent hike over the revised April estimate of 988,000 "?u but is 14.5 percent better than the May 2014 rate of 903,000.

Single-family homes completed in May stood at 635,000, or 5.2 percent below the revised April rate of 670,000.