Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta President Dennis Lockhart said the outlook for the U.S. housing market remains positive despite a slump in construction starts.

“I can still remain not effusively bullish on housing but believing there is still momentum in the housing sector, and we will have a decent picture when we look back at the end of the year,” Lockhart told reporters after a speech in Macon, Georgia. “The conditions for purchasing a home remain good” and there is “pent-up demand” among young people to form households, he said.

Builders began work on 880,000 homes at an annualized rate last month, down 16 percent from December’s pace, according to data from the Commerce Department issued today in Washington. The decrease was the biggest since February 2011. Economists have cited winter storms for disappointing data on manufacturing and retail sales following two straight employment reports that fell short of economists’ forecasts.

Lockhart said he’s not sure if recent weakness in economic data stems from “fundamental weakness or whether it is just weather and other transitory considerations such as inventory work-down.”

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