apartment construction timeline increasing, says report

The amount of time it takes to build apartment complexes has increased by about four months since 2013.

So says a report released by the U.S. Census Bureau, which says that the longest start to completion time frame has been seen in apartment complex projects having more than 20 units.

Those projects took an average of 19 months to complete after all of the necessary permits had been secured.

Oddly, according to the Census Bureau’s Survey of Construction, projects with five to nine units took the second longest time, at 16 months, to complete.

But the third longest time frame came in the ten to nineteen-unit range, with an average 15-month construction schedule.

The survey further indicated that protracted construction time frames in 2018 were at their longest since the beginning of the Great Recession

Regionally, the Northeast saw the longest construction time frame at 20 months, followed by the West at 17 months, and the South at just over 15 months.

The Midwest scored the shortest time frames at just under 13 months.

Conducted annually since 1959, the Survey of Construction compiles information from some 900 permit-issuing offices nationally.  

By Garry Boulard

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