The South Atlantic Wins the Race to the Home Building Finish Line

How long it takes to get from the permitting stage to finishing a new home depends on what part of the country the project is in. The national average time to build takes 7.7 months, including paperwork and construction. The South Atlantic, an area from Maryland to Florida, takes just over half a year to complete a project whereas starting in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, or New York will set a builder back almost 10 months.

The time to build a single-family home, from pulling the permit to hauling away the construction debris, increased slightly in 2018 compared to the prior year and varies significantly depending on where the home is being built and who is doing the work.

National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) analyst Na Zhao used data from the Census Bureau's 2018 Survey of Construction (SOC) for a post in NAHB's Eye on Housing Blog. It says that the average completion time for a single-family home is 7.7 months. Actual building takes 6.7 months with an additional month elapsing between getting authorization and starting construction. The average time (from Mortgage News Daily files, not the blog post) in 2017 was 7.5 months. All of the additional time in 2018 occurred during construction.

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