Length of Time For New Residential Construction

Length of Time From Authorization of Construction
to Start For Private Residential Buildings

These tables contain annual statistics on the length of time from authorization of construction to start of new private residential buildings in permit-issuing places. Data are obtained from the U.S. Census Bureau's Survey of Construction. Since the Survey of Construction is designed to collect data on a monthly basis, it can only be determined in what month a building was authorized or started rather than the precise day. For example, buildings started on August 1 or August 31 would be counted as starting in August. Because of this, it is assumed for this supplement that a building authorized and started in the same month was started immediately after the permit was issued. That is, we use zero number of months in the computation. Buildings started in the first month after authorization took the full month to begin; those started in the second month after authorization took 2 months; those started in the third month after authorization took 3 months, and so on. Also, since many jurisdictions allow the ground breaking (start) to occur before the final permit is issued, there may be a negative number of months from authorization to start. For instance, projects where the building started in the month prior to the final permit use -1 in the computation of the length of time.