US housing starts and completions statistics & facts

US housing starts and completions at a glance

Housing starts and completions measure the beginning and the end of the home building process. A start is counted when excavation for the foundation begins; a completion when all construction work is finished and the home is ready to be occupied. According to the US Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), builders started 1,355,800 homes in 2025 and completed 1,488,500. Starts were 0.8 percent lower than in 2024, while completions fell 8.5 percent after reaching their highest level since 2007 the year before. For the wider picture of spending, permits and prices, see our overview of residential construction in the United States.

The two measures tell different stories because of the time it takes to build. A single-family home typically takes several months from start to completion, while a large apartment building can take two years or more. The surge in apartment starts in 2021 and 2022 therefore showed up as a record wave of multifamily completions in 2024, just as new starts were falling. In 2026 the pattern has reversed: starts are roughly stable, but completions are dropping sharply as the apartment pipeline empties.

Single-family and multifamily starts

Single-family homes make up the bulk of new construction. In 2025, builders started 939,700 single-family homes, 7.2 percent fewer than the 1,012,900 started in 2024, according to the Census Bureau. Single-family starts peaked in this cycle at 1,127,200 in 2021, when low mortgage rates and the move to suburban living set off a boom, and have since moved in a range of about 940,000 to 1,010,000 a year.

Apartment boom and bust: starts in buildings with five or more units peaked at 531,000 in 2022 and fell to 336,200 in 2024, while single-family starts stayed close to one million.

Multifamily starts were far more volatile. Starts of units in buildings with five or more units rose from 376,800 in 2020 to 462,100 in 2021 and a peak of 531,000 in 2022, the highest in decades, as investors raced to build rental apartments for a fast-growing renter population. Higher interest rates, tighter bank lending and softer rents then caused a sharp correction: five-plus starts fell to 458,800 in 2023 and 336,200 in 2024, a drop of 37 percent from the peak. In 2025 they recovered to about 396,600, according to the preliminary data.

Housing completions over two decades

Completions follow starts with a delay. Before the financial crisis, builders completed more than 1.9 million homes a year in 2005 and 2006. After the crash, completions fell to a low of 584,900 in 2011, two years after starts hit bottom. They then rose steadily for more than a decade, passing one million in 2016 and reaching 1,448,800 in 2023. In 2024, completions jumped to 1,626,900, the most since 2007, before falling back to 1,488,500 in 2025.

Highest since 2007: completions reached 1.63 million in 2024, more than two and a half times the 2011 low of 584,900.

The 2024 peak was driven almost entirely by apartments. Completions of units in buildings with five or more units reached 591,700 in 2024, compared with 438,300 in 2023 and 359,100 in 2022. Single-family completions, by contrast, barely changed at around one million a year from 2022 to 2025. In 2025, five-plus completions fell to about 471,800 as fewer projects were left in the pipeline.

Two years apart: multifamily starts peaked in 2022 at 531,000, while completions peaked two years later in 2024 at 591,700.

This timing matters for renters. The wave of new apartments that came onto the market in 2024 and 2025 pushed the rental vacancy rate up to 7.3 percent in the second quarter of 2026 and slowed rent growth in many cities. With fewer projects started in 2023 and 2024, the supply of new apartments is now shrinking, which could tighten rental markets again from 2027. The longer-term balance between housing supply and demand is covered in our report on the US housing shortage.

Starts and completions in 2026

The monthly data for 2026 show stable starts and sharply lower completions. In August 2026, housing starts ran at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1,275,000, 2.6 percent below July and 1.2 percent below August 2025. Single-family starts rose 7.6 percent in the month to 918,000, 5.2 percent more than a year earlier, while starts in buildings with five or more units dropped 22.5 percent to 344,000. Monthly multifamily figures are volatile because a few large projects can swing the total.

Completions collapse: total completions fell 27.1 percent in a year to an annual rate of 1.13 million in August 2026, while single-family starts rose 5.2 percent.

Completions fell much more steeply. In August 2026 they ran at an annual rate of 1,128,000, 11.9 percent below July and 27.1 percent below the 1,548,000 of August 2025. Single-family completions were down 22.9 percent and five-plus completions 35.7 percent from a year earlier. In the first eight months of 2026, a total of 925,100 homes were started, 1.0 percent fewer than in the same period of 2025, and 865,200 were completed, 12.9 percent fewer.

Homes under construction and waiting to start

Between starts and completions lies the pipeline of homes under construction. In August 2026, 1,271,000 homes were under construction, 3.2 percent fewer than a year earlier, of which 589,000 were single-family homes and 666,000 were in buildings with five or more units. The total peaked at around 1.71 million in October 2022, and the number of five-plus units under construction reached a record of about one million in July 2023. Since then, the multifamily pipeline has shrunk by about a third. The differences between the two segments are covered in our report on single-family vs multifamily construction.

A further 280,000 units had been authorized by building permits but not yet started in August 2026, 12.9 percent more than a year earlier. This backlog is a sign that some projects have been delayed, often because financing is expensive or construction costs have risen. Permit trends by state are covered in our report on US building permits.

Housing starts by region

The South dominates both starts and completions. In 2025, the region accounted for 721,400 starts and 800,700 completions, more than half of the national total in each case. The West followed with 299,800 starts and 350,500 completions, the Midwest with 198,600 and 192,700, and the Northeast with 136,000 and 144,600. In three of the four regions completions exceeded starts in 2025, reflecting the large number of apartment buildings finished during the year.

The South builds the most: it accounted for 721,400 starts and 800,700 completions in 2025, more than half of the US total.

In the Midwest, starts were slightly higher than completions, the only region where this was the case. Home building in the Northeast remains limited by high land costs, strict zoning and slower population growth. The concentration of construction in the South follows population movement toward Sun Belt states such as Texas, Florida, North Carolina and Georgia, where land is cheaper and building rules are generally less restrictive. Which companies build these homes is covered in our report on US homebuilders.

Housing starts in historical context

Over the long term, the current level of building is moderate. Housing starts reached 2.07 million in 2005 at the height of the housing bubble and fell 73 percent to 554,000 in 2009, the lowest level in the modern series. The recovery was slow: it took until 2019 for starts to reach 1.29 million and until 2021 for them to exceed 1.6 million. At around 1.36 million in 2024 and 2025, starts are close to their average of the past decade but still well below the levels of the early 2000s, when the population was smaller.

Many economists argue that the long period of underbuilding after 2008 is one of the main causes of the high home prices and rents seen today. Starts were below one million a year from 2008 to 2013, a total of six years, which left a large gap between the number of households and the number of available homes. Rising construction costs, discussed in our report on the cost to build a house, and the challenges reported by builders, covered in our report on home builder challenges, make it difficult to close this gap quickly.

Outlook for starts and completions

Completions are likely to keep falling through 2026, because fewer homes are under construction than a year ago and the apartment pipeline is shrinking. Single-family starts depend mainly on mortgage rates and on how quickly builders can sell their large inventory of finished homes. Multifamily starts have stabilized at a lower level, and the rising number of projects authorized but not started suggests that more construction could begin quickly if financing costs fall. The next Census Bureau release, with data for September 2026, is scheduled for October 20, 2026. How home building fits into the wider industry is covered in our report on the US construction industry.

Starts and completions in numbers

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