Building permits, a closely-watched reading that is less affected by weather than actual starts, also shot up, rising 5.7% from October and 20.7% from the year before to 681,000 homes annually.
Helping to lift building was the fact that the average rate for 30-year and 15-year fixed rate mortgages hit record lows last week, according to Freddie Mac. And the latest National Association of Home Builders' survey released Monday also showed a pick-up in activity, with the best level of customer traffic since early 2008.
Both permits and starts were the strongest readings since the spring of 2010, the original deadline for a homebuyer tax credit that sparked a temporary rebound in building and home sales.
Joseph LaVorgna, chief U.S. economist for Deutsche Bank, said it's important not to get too excited about a single month of strong building, particularly so far ahead of the spring selling season -- a key period for the market. But he said the latest readings are encouraging.
"There has been a noticeable uptrend in several key housing metrics in the back half of this year, so even though we are downplaying the November data to some degree, it does appear that residential construction is finally beginning to rise from its post-recession lows," he said in a note to clients Tuesday.
The gains in single-family home starts and permits were more modest than those for multi-family homes.
Starts of buildings with five or more housing units nearly tripled from a year ago, to an annual level of 230,000.
It was the greatest number of starts of units of that size since September 2008, the month the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy sparked a meltdown in financial markets. 
