New Builds Create Affordable Options in Florida

SANTA CLARA, Calif. – Florida is among the top 10 states leading the way in new home construction for volume, affordability and future growth, Realtor.com said in its New Construction Insights report. The state is also among the few seeing new construction priced lower than existing homes on a per square foot basis.

For its newly released New Construction Insights report, Realtor.com ranked each state along three criteria:

• Share of listings that are new builds
• Price per square foot premium on those new builds versus existing home listings (ranked lowest to highest)
• Number of permits for new single-family homes per capita issued

Realtor.com then averaged the rankings to get a sense of the volume, affordability and future growth of the new construction inventory. The top 10 states with their component rankings are listed below:

“Nationwide, builders have responded to the gap in existing home affordability by building smaller, lower-priced homes and are a major driver of this year’s leveling-off of listing prices,” said Joel Berner, Realtor.com’s senior economist. “In the years since the Great Recession, the pace of household formation in the United States has far exceeded the rate of homebuilding, resulting in a supply shortage of over 7 million single-family homes at the end of 2023. There is a clear and present need for newly built homes to meet the demand for housing, and this construction is an important contributor to overall economic activity.”

Methodology

Realtor.com housing data as of August 2024. Listings include the active inventory of newly built single-family homes and condos/townhomes/row homes/co-ops for the given level of geography on Realtor.com. Realtor.com data history goes back to July 2016. For the permits per capita criterion of the state rankings, permitting and population data come from the most recent releases by the US Census Bureau.

Source: Realtor.com

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