The Census Bureau says U.S. companies broke ground on a surprisingly high number of houses in November. The agency says housing starts rose 9% from a year ago, primarily because of an 18% increase in starts on single-family houses. Housing starts are measured in rates that are multiplied by 12, with additional adjustments applied, to show how many homes would be built if construction continued at that pace for a full year. At the November clip, companies would have built about 1.1 million single-family homes and 1.56 million homes overall, according to the Census Bureau. Economists expected a significantly lower rate of 1.36…
