Data & Press
Everything here is free to quote, chart or republish with attribution. The findings below come from federal microdata and are, as far as we can tell, not published anywhere else. If you are writing about construction costs or local building activity and need a number checked, the underlying data is linked at every step.
Original findings
A contractor-built house takes a median of 9 months — but a quarter take over 13
Computed from the start and completion month of 2,497 individual houses in the Census Survey of Construction public use microdata. Census publishes an average; the distribution is not published anywhere, and the spread is the part that matters for planning. Houses built for sale complete in a median of 7 months, so a custom build genuinely runs about 2 months longer.
→ Build timelines by stateSmall houses do not cost more per square foot
The widely repeated claim that small builds carry a large per-square-foot premium is not supported by the microdata. Across every size bracket observed, weighted contract price per square foot varies by only 7 percentage points, with no consistent direction. We published this after it contradicted a caveat we had written ourselves.
→ Cost per square foot by house sizeModular homes are 8.4% cheaper than site-built, not the 10–20% usually quoted
Contractor-built modular houses run a median of $135.71/sq ft against $148.15/sq ft site-built. The saving is concentrated in the 1,800–2,399 sq ft band; below 1,800 sq ft it nearly disappears.
→ Modular vs. stick-builtBuilding costs more than buying in 50 of 51 states
Construction at each state's rate for a median-size new home, plus land at FHFA's measured share, against Zillow's typical existing home value. The national median gap is 57.6%. The common "it depends where you live" framing is wrong: the answer is consistent, and what varies is the size of the gap.
→ Build vs. buy, every stateFree permit charts for every state
Thirty-six years of single-family building permits, charted for each state from Census Building Permits Survey data. Hot-link them — they are static images on our servers, they cost you nothing to host, and they update when the Census data does. The only condition is a visible credit link, which the snippet includes.
Embed code
<a href="https://housebuildcalc.com/state/texas/">
<img src="https://housebuildcalc.com/embed/permits/texas.svg"
alt="Single-family building permits in Texas, 1990-2025"
width="720" height="300" loading="lazy">
</a>
<p>Chart: <a href="https://housebuildcalc.com/">HouseBuildCalc</a>,
from U.S. Census Bureau Building Permits Survey data.</p>Swap texas for any state slug — for example north-carolina or ohio. Every state is available at /embed/permits/<state>.svg.
All 51 charts
Embed the calculator
A working cost calculator for your readers, free and without registration. Note the credit line sits outside the iframe — search engines cannot see anything inside one, so a link in there would do neither of us any good.
<iframe src="https://housebuildcalc.com/embed/calculator/"
width="100%" height="1100" frameborder="0" loading="lazy"
title="Home Build Cost Calculator"></iframe>
<p>Calculator by <a href="https://housebuildcalc.com/">HouseBuildCalc</a>.</p>What the data covers
Costs
Cost per square foot for all 50 states and D.C. by finish level — $188/sq ft nationally at mid-range, or $376,000 for a 2,000 sq ft house, excluding land. Calibrated against Census contract-price data and BLS wages.
Building activity
Single-family permits 1990–2025 nationally and by state, plus 1,112 counties with their own 2000–2025 record.
Machine-readable
Every dataset is published as JSON with a described schema at /data/index.json, with llms.txt and an OpenAPI description for automated use.
How to cite
HouseBuildCalc, Construction Cost & Building Activity Data, 2026. housebuildcalc.com. Underlying federal sources are named on every page, and we would rather you cited those directly than took our word for a figure.
Press enquiries and corrections
If a figure here looks wrong, tell us and we will check it against the source and correct it publicly — we have done that twice already, once about our own published caveat on small-house costs. Reach us via the contact page, and see methodology for how the estimates are built.
Data last refreshed 2026-10-09. Charts and figures may be reproduced with attribution to housebuildcalc.com. Underlying data: U.S. Census Bureau (Survey of Construction, Building Permits Survey), U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, FHFA, NOAA, Freddie Mac and Zillow, each named on the page where it is used.