The Shape of New Homes Hitting the Market

The largest supply of new homes since the Great Recession has hit the nation's housing market. According to the Census Bureau, there were 7.7 percent more new homes on the market in 2017 than in 2016.

The median square footage of these new homes ticket up from 2,422 to 2,426 square feet over this period. As of April 2018, the median price of a new home was $312,400, versus $257,900 for an existing home. According to Realtor.com, the 21.1 percent price difference is generally to do with higher land, labor, and material costs. Realtor.com chief economist Danielle Hale says, “It’s good that there’s more construction, but there’s still plenty of room for more building. Builders are obviously catering more toward wealthier buyers. But we know that there’s plenty of housing demand on the more affordable end.”

Newly built abodes were also more likely to be part of a homeowners association than not. About 487,000 of these new abodes were in HOAs. That may be because new construction is more likely to take place in the suburbs and beyond, where there is more land available and where costs are lower than in the suburbs. "Construction is slowly shifting back from the core of metro areas to the outer suburbs. It’s because that's where your normal buyers look for houses," says Issi Romem, chief economist at BuildZoom, an online homebuilding and remodeling marketplace. "They're going to be larger than the homes you'll find in the center of town."

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