When the story is written about the 2021 construction market, the single-family construction market will be lauded as the strongest niche of them all. When measured on a value of new construction basis, year-over-year growth rate of new single-family construction was up +30.4% through September to $412.7 billion. The fact that single-family construction accounted for 26.2% of all construction dollars spent during this period gives you a pretty good idea of why the housing market is such a critical element of the entire U.S. economy.
With demographic trends pointing to a healthy parade of Millennials and other new homebuyers in the market for their first home and low mortgage rates, the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) expects the single-family housing market to have another year of double-digit growth in 2022. It’s forecasting 1.1 million housing starts in 2022, a +15.8% increase. You can expect homebuilding activity to continue on its historical trend of being ultra-concentrated in the states with the highest population growth, which are in the Sunbelt. Through Sept. 2021, 10 states accounted for an estimated 62% of all single-family building permits — Texas, Florida, North Carolina, California, Georgia, Arizona, South Carolina, Tennessee, Colorado and Utah.
Drill down into the data, and you will also find that a relative handful of Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) account for a giant share of all housing activity. For example, the 50 MSAs in the chart on page 2 currently account for 31% of all building permits year-to-date. Some perennial housing all-stars made the Top 10 on the list — Houston, Dallas, Phoenix, Atlanta, Austin, TX, Tampa, FL, Charlotte, NC, Orlando and Jacksonville, FL, and Nashville, TN.
Click here to download the latest housing data for all 300-plus MSAs
