How Many Homes Were Built Last Decade?

No builder is going to miss the difficulties faced in the 2010s after the Great Recession. But the grit and determination home builders displayed as they worked to stabilize their companies is a a commendable feat. Although lower than previous decade counts, builders added almost 7 million single-family homes despite financial instability, extreme inventory surpluses and shortages, and a lack of skilled labor working against them. In terms of the regions that grew the most, the South led the pack, a trend that experts believe will continue as we turn towards the next decade.

Housing production had a long way to go in order to catch up after the recession, with a shortage of homebuilding materials, shortage of labor and the lingering economic effects of the crisis impacting homebuilding.

Despite that, there were still nearly 7 million single-family houses built in the last decade.

More specifically, there were 6.8 million single-family housing starts between 2010 and 2019, which included 1.53 million custom home building starts, 827,000 townhouses starts (single-family attached) and 300,000 single-family built-for-rent starts, according to the National Association of Home Builders.

Over half of single-family starts were in the South region, NAHB said. The West had 23% of starts, while the Midwest had 15% and the Northeast had 8%.

Looking ahead to this year, new data from Zillow suggests that southern markets are actually expected to outperform other national markets this year.

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