Custom Home Building Outperforms Overall Housing Market in Q2 2020

A closer look, by the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) at the U.S. Census Data from the Quarterly Starts and Completion by Purpose and Design report reveals that custom home building outperformed the overall building market during the tumultuous second quarter of 2020. This out-performance is at odds with the conventional wisdom that spec home building saw outsized gains during the second quarter. There were 45,000 total custom building starts in the second quarter. Year-over-year this is a -6% decline, with a total of 48,000 being built in the second quarter of 2019. However, this decline was smaller than the overall decline for single-family housing starts of almost 11%. Over the last 4 quarters custom home building has increased 5% to 177,000 over the prior four quarters total of 168,000 starts.