Cost of Constructing a Home - 2024 January 20, 2025 - NAHB Construction Cost Survey Results

Sep 13, 2026

NAHB’s 2024 Construction Cost Survey compiles data from a questionnaire sent to a stratified sample of home builders to quantify how construction-related categories contribute to the sales price of a typical newly built single-family home. The survey reports national average breakdowns, including construction costs, finished lot costs, financing cost, overhead, marketing, sales commission, and builder profit. It also details major construction stages such as site work, foundations, framing, exterior finishes, major systems rough-ins, and interior finishes, along with their average shares. Key caveats address representativeness limits and guidance on comparing across years.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryGeneral

FormatPDF

Pages11

Reading Time4 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Caveats

Methodology

2024 National Results - Single-Family Price and Cost Breakdowns

Cost of Constructing a Home-2024 January 20, 2025 By: Eric Lynch Economics & Housing Policy National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) Introduction Over the years, NAHB has periodically conducted “construction cost surveys” to collect information from builders on the various components that go into the sales price of a typical newly-built single-family home. NAHB’s most recent Construction Cost survey (conducted in the Fall of 2024) shows that, on average, 64.4% of the sales price is due to construction costs and 13.7% to finished lot costs. On average, builder profit is 11.0% of the sales price. The following sections describe the methodology of the survey and discuss the results in more detail. Caveats The NAHB Construction Cost Survey is designed to show percentage cost breakdowns for a typical home built by a subset of NAHB builders. It is not designed to capture representative characteristics of the average home built during a particular year. Characteristics such as the size or price of homes in the sample may therefore differ significantly from averages reported in the Census Bureau’s Survey of Construction (SOC), which is based on a much larger sample and is designed to produce such averages. Because the NAHB survey does not control for year-to-year differences in the builders or homes in the sample, users should be cautious when comparing results across multiple years and defer to the published SOC data for this purpose when possible. The survey results published here are national averages; as the survey sample is not large enough for a geographic breakdown. Building practices, the cost of labor, the cost of land, and to some extent the cost of materials can vary from place to place and depend on the nature of the specific home being built. Each category includes all the costs paid by a builder that go into a particular item, including labor costs paid directly by the general contractor, the cost of hiring subcontractors, and the cost of materials, however they are purchased. Although the survey can provide a broad idea of construction costs for the average new single-family home, it is not a perfect tool for estimating costs for a particular house in a particular location. Companies that provide more specific cost estimating, usually for a fee, include RSMeans and Marshall & Swift-Core Logic. Methodology NAHB’s 2024 Construction Cost survey was conducted by emailing a questionnaire to a representative sample of 4,000 home builders. The sample was stratified by the size of the builder (based on the number of 2023 single-family starts) and by region of the country (the sample being proportional to housing starts in each of the four principal Census regions) . Over time, NAHB has modified the survey and its methodology. In 2009, the survey methodology changed to provide a better, more representative sample of single-family construction across the country. In 2013, NAHB developed a different construction cost breakdown that more closely resembles the steps that builders take when building a home. Prior to 2013, the breakdown had 29 sections. In 2013, NAHB created eight subcategories for each of the major stages of construction, with a total of 36 sections grouped under the appropriate construction stage. The new format simplified data collection, greatly reducing the number of follow-up calls needed to clarify and verify builder responses. Respondents were asked to provide information about the typical single-family home built by their firms during 2024. After examining the data and performing an outlier analysis, usable responses were received from 41 builders. Table 1 shows the detailed results of the 2024 Construction Cost survey. | Table 1. SINGLE-FAMILY PRICE AND COST BREAKDOWNS | | | | --- | --- | --- | | 2024 National Results | | | | Average Lot Size: Average Finished Area: | | 20,907
2,647 | | I. Sale Price Breakdown 1 | Average | Share of Price | | A. Finished Lot Cost (i

FAQs

How was the 2024 survey conducted?

NAHB emailed a questionnaire to 4,000 home builders, stratified by builder size and region, then performed outlier analysis; usable responses were received from 41 builders.

Sep 13, 2026

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