Custom Home Building Activity Lags Behind Overall Market
While single-family home construction continues to boom, custom home building lags behind. The National Association of Home Builders reports that custom home building trails behind the overall single-family construction market during the third quarter of this year. Compared to the third quarter of 2019, custom home building starts declined 7%. The end of 2019 and beginning of 2020 gave custom home building a strong start, which helps to boost the four quarter total.
Over the last four quarters, custom housing starts totaled 175,000, which was a 2% increase over the prior four quarter total of 171,000 starts, thanks to strong quarterly totals at the end of 2019 and the start of 2020.
As measured on a one-year moving average, the market share of custom home building in terms of total single-family starts is now 19%, down from a cycle high of 31.5% set during the second quarter of 2009.