May 2025 Residential Construction

I’m not sure that a single word from last month would have to change to report on this month’s data.

Here’s the estimate of construction times. Multi-family is back to the pre-Covid norm. Single family is still a bit elevated.

Maybe I’m just not good enough at finding drama. The Financial Times review of this month’s data has the headline, “US housing construction falls to 5-year low as tariffs weigh on sector” and the opening paragraph, “Residential construction in the US dropped to a five-year low in May, as homebuilders grappled with volatile tariffs on imported materials, stubbornly high mortgage rates and excess inventories of unsold units.”

None of that seems like a helpful way to describe this month’s data.

Details below.