US Residential Construction Spending Fell 4.8% Over the Year While Public Building Rose 2.5%

US private residential construction ran at 882.3 billion dollars in August, 4.8% below a year earlier, while public building was the only major sector still growing.

Private residential construction in the United States ran at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 882.3 billion US dollars in August 2026, 4.8% below the same month of 2025, according to figures the Census Bureau released on 1 October. Total construction spending across every sector reached 2,203.1 billion dollars, down 1.7% over the year, and public building was the only major category still expanding, at 2.5%.

The monthly gain sits inside the margin of error

Spending rose 0.9% from July, but the Census Bureau attaches a margin of 1.0 percentage point to that estimate, so the published range includes zero. The residential figure behaves the same way: a 1.1% monthly rise carries a margin of 1.3 points. The bureau flags these cases itself, noting that where the 90% confidence interval contains zero there is not sufficient evidence of a real change. The annual declines are a different matter — 1.7% against a margin of 1.5 points clears the threshold for total spending. The defensible reading of August is therefore flat month to month and genuinely weaker than a year ago.

Single-family building is falling faster than apartments

New single-family construction ran at 403.3 billion dollars, 3.5% below August 2025, while new multifamily was close to unchanged at 115.8 billion dollars, down 0.6%. Both rose 0.2% from July. The split matters because single-family work is roughly three and a half times the multifamily figure, so the shallower apartment decline does little to offset it. Private non-residential spending, at 773.0 billion dollars, fell 1.0% over the year. Public construction, at 547.8 billion dollars, is the only counterweight in the series.

Eight months in, the year is behind 2025

Between January and August 2026 construction put in place totalled 1,450.4 billion dollars, 3.1% below the 1,496.6 billion recorded in the same eight months of 2025, with a margin of 1.0 point. July was revised to 2,184.5 billion in total and 872.7 billion for residential work. The bureau reports that moving from a first to a second estimate shifts total spending by an average of 0.65%, private spending by 0.75% and public spending by 0.59% — small enough that a 3.1% shortfall across eight months is unlikely to be a revision artefact.

What a smaller pipeline means for a price level that is barely moving

Glopra records a national asking price of 2,411 US dollars per square metre for the United States in August 2026, taken from the median listing price per square foot published by the largest American property listings portal and redistributed by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. The paired figures that produce our yield come from a different sample and are kept separate from it: a typical home value of 369,678 US dollars against a typical asking rent of 1,948 US dollars a month, both for August 2026. Transaction costs run at about 6.9% of the purchase price, foreign buyers face no restrictions on freehold ownership, and a non-resident letting a home out carries an effective tax of roughly 10.66% on the rent under the election that taxes letting on a net basis, against a 30% withholding on gross rent without it.

Set beside those numbers, a residential pipeline 4.8% smaller than a year ago is not straightforwardly a price story. Supply is contracting while the price level is close to flat, which fits demand softening at a similar pace better than it fits scarcity building up. Two cautions run the other way. Construction spending counts dollars put in place rather than homes completed, so cost inflation can disguise a steeper fall in physical output. And a pipeline that thins now constrains supply two to three years out, long after this month's reading has been revised and forgotten.

Sources: US Census Bureau, Monthly Construction Spending August 2026, released 1 October 2026 https://www.census.gov/construction/c30/pdf/release.pdf

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