apartment building construction taking longer, says survey

Today, on average, it takes just a little over 17 months to complete a multifamily apartment building, according to new numbers released by the federal Census Bureau.

That authorization-to-completion timeline, says the Bureau, has slowly increased during the last 7 years, “as regulatory challenges expanded and the skilled labor shortage” continued.

Only naturally, the time line for completion is impacted by the number of units within a given project: buildings with 20 or more units take the longest time at up to 19 months.

Buildings with anywhere from 10 to 19 units are usually completed in just under 19 months, while buildings with 5 to 9 units typically wrap in 16 months.

While buildings with 2 to 4 units take the shortest period of time to complete at 12.6  months, that number is still significantly higher than the Bureau’s earliest survey numbers, recorded in 1971, when the average length of time came in at 5.9 months.

Regionally, it takes the longest time to complete an apartment project in the Northeastern states, where the average is 20.3 months. More than three months are shaved off that schedule in the West, with an average of 17 months.

The South has seen authorization-to-completion timelines of 15.3 months, followed by the Midwest at just under 13 months.
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The overall authorization-to-completion rate for all regions combined show that the timeline was the most abbreviated in 2013 at exactly 12 months.

​By Garry Boulard

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