The Most Active Cities for Home Construction

With low housing inventory, home construction has been ramping up to fill in the gaps in some places. But, what cities have been leading the charge on development?

StorageCafe’s latest report looked at new construction over the last 10 years (2013 - 2022) in the 100 largest cities to see which areas experienced the most notable changes in inventory expansion across the major real estate sectors. The analysis considered building permits for single-family homes and multifamily units, and new deliveries of square footage in the industrial, office, retail and self-storage sectors.

The report found that overall multifamily construction has picked up pace, with 47% more building permits issued compared to the previous decade. Nationally, more than 8.3M building permits were issued for single-family homes and almost 5M for multifamily units in the last 10 years.

As for regionally, the Sun Belt region takes the lead with 15 of the Top 20 cities with the highest volumes of real estate construction from 2013 to 2022 being Southern or Southwestern urban hotspots. Texas is also high in the rankings, with five cities in the Top 20.

The Top 10 cities for real estate development:

Houston, Texas: 55,601 single-family permits and 89,448 multifamily permits
San Antonio, Texas: 33,978 single-family permits and 38,526 multifamily permits
Austin, Texas: 37,029 single-family permits and 98,764 multifamily permits
Fort Worth, Texas: 50,591 single-family permits and 36,686 multifamily permits
Dallas, Texas: 17,332 single-family permits and 68,927 multifamily permits
Phoenix, Arizona: 32,359 single-family permits and 49,019 multifamily permits
Jacksonville, Florida: 36,976 single-family permits and 27,803 multifamily permits
Las Vegas, Nevada: 18,938 single-family permits and 5,556 multifamily permits
Denver, Colorado: 17,925 single-family permits and 58,751 multifamily permits
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma: 33,192 single-family permits and 3,393 multifamily permits

Major takeaway:

When asked what factors contribute to the regional differences in real estate development in the United States, experts commented the following:

“Employment and migration patterns, which are the result of lifestyle choices, tax rates (personal and business), overall cost of living and doing business. Employment typically drives population growth (or decline), and in some areas, retirement migration is a factor—for example in Florida (No. 1) and Arizona (No. 2). There is not as much retirement population growth in Texas, but very high population growth due to employment,” said Mark Stapp, Fred E. Taylor Professor of Real Estate, W. P. Carey School of Business.

“We have had for decades, and continue to have, a general migration of the population to the south and west of the U.S. In fact, in the New England states, populations will soon be declining. Our population growth rate without immigration is approaching 0.1%—that is 1/10th of 1% per year, the lowest ever. Most of the population increase is coming from elderly whites and Hispanics. Immigration as a source of labor has been reduced in the past six years, and it is not evenly distributed.” added Norm Miller, PhD, Ernest Hahn Chair and Emeritus Professor of Real-Estate Burnham-Moores Center for Real Estate University of San Diego, Knauss School of Business.

For the full report, click here.

Claudia Larsen is an associate editor for RISMedia.