April 2025 Residential Construction

I’d say this month continued the recent tepid trends of continued sideways movement with some hints of keeping powder dry because of Trump chaos.

Figure 1 is an estimate of construction times. Units under construction divided by the average of starts and completions. Multi-family construction has basically returned to pre-Covid construction schedules. Those schedules were still much longer than schedules were in previous decades. Some of that is regulatory bloat and some of it is because the average size of 5+ unit projects has become much larger. (And, it could be that larger project times are partially a response to regulatory bloat.)

Figure 1

Construction times for single-family homes have stalled a bit. In earnings calls, builders seem to be reporting construction times near pre-Covid norms. I’d say that the Census numbers are a little more pessimistic than what I would expect from builder reports. My general impression is that construction is back to normal, but that builders are still reporting some idiosyncratic delays. A few dozen homes waiting for materials here, a few dozen waiting for public utilities to be finished there. In general, I think we can say that single-family construction is still somewhat supply constrained.

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