Home Builders Ramped Up, Shortening Construction Time by 10 Days

The housing market needs homes fast and builders delivered, bringing home construction times down by 10 days in 2020 The Census Bureau’s 2020 Survey of Construction found the average completion time for a single-family house is about 7.8 months with actual construction taking about 6.8 months and another month for authorization. Data on completion times does vary by region and type of construction (custom or for-sale), notes the National Association of Home Builders. The association predicts the ramping up of construction will suffer for 2021 construction overall as supply-chain issues add more problems for home building.

Among all single-family houses completed in 2020, houses built for sale took the shortest amount of time, 6.9 months from obtaining building permits to completion, while houses built by owners (custom builds) required the longest time, 13 months. Homes built by hired contractors normally needed around 9.7 months, and homes built-for-rent took about 10.6 months from authorization to completion.

Single-family homes built-for-rent began construction within the same month after obtaining building authorizations. The other types, including custom homes built for sale, built by owners serving as general contractors and built by contractors on owner’s land, had one month or a little over one-month lag between obtaining permits and the start of construction.

The average time from authorization to completion also varies across divisions. The division with the longest duration was the Middle Atlantic (11.6 months), followed by New England (11.6 months), the Pacific (10.0 months), and the East South Central (9.1 months) in 2020. These four divisions had average time from permit to completion exceeding the nation’s average (7.8 months).

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