New home construction cost in 2026: what new-house permits were filed at in 20 cities

New home construction cost by city

Each city's own page lists every builder with its usual home: Cary, Sacramento County, Cape Coral, Columbus, Minneapolis, Miami, Denton, Bend.

What the filed value covers, and what it leaves out

A new-home permit value is the builder's estimate of the cost to construct the house. It is not the price a buyer pays. NAHB's 2024 Cost of Constructing a Home survey split the average new home's sales price into construction (64.4%), the finished lot (13.7%) and the rest: builder overhead, financing, sales commission and profit (NAHB Eye on Housing, January 2025). The U.S. Census Bureau's median sales price for new houses sold in August 2026 was $393,700, land included (Census, released 24 September 2026).

So to turn a filed value into a budget:

1. Start from the usual filed value or the builder band for your city.
2. Add the land, or your lot's value if you already own it.
3. Add site work the permit may not include: well or sewer connection, driveway, grading. Arlington County, Virginia, for example, requires a stormwater permit or civil engineering plan alongside the building permit, and a development plan once land disturbance exceeds 2,500 square feet (Arlington County, read 21 October 2026).
4. If you are buying from a builder rather than hiring one, add the builder's overhead and margin, which NAHB's survey puts in the remaining fifth of the price.

Builders who file a lot of homes, and builders who file a few

The middle-half column shows each builder's usual home, for builders with three or more permits. A tract builder files many similar houses; a custom builder files few, larger ones. In Cape Coral 158 builders' usual homes sit mostly between $387,294 and $541,944, a tight band; in Cary the band runs from $333,408 to $984,847, so which builder you pick there moves the price more than the city does.

Some of the biggest permit markets record a value but no final date: Nashville's usual new home was filed at $264,404 across 10,208 permits, Denver's at $275,110 and Colorado Springs' at $407,676. They are left out of the table because the days and finished columns would be blank.

How long the build takes

From permit issue to final inspection, Greensboro (156 days), Sacramento County (171) and Cary (176) build fastest: about six months. Chicago (621), Cincinnati (660) and Miami (648) take nearly two years, and their finished shares are low (37.8% in Chicago, 53.6% in Miami). The fast cities are also the concentrated ones: the five busiest builders filed 86.9% of Sacramento County's new homes and 67.8% of Cary's, against 11.9% of Chicago's and 14.3% of Miami's, where many small builders each put up a house or two. Ask a builder for its own permit-to-final days on its last five homes, and check them on its record.

Check a builder in five minutes

1. Find your city's row and builder band above.
2. On the Cary new-home compare page (or your city's), find the builder: homes permitted, finished share, licence status.
3. Ask for the addresses of two finished homes like yours and look up their final inspection dates.
4. Read our home builder guide for the licence and contract checks in your state.

See every Cary home builder by finished share →

What these numbers cannot tell you

The filed value is the builder's own estimate, and builders differ in what they put in the figure; nobody audits it. Most cities record no square footage, so there is no per-square-foot figure here. Land, site work, impact and utility fees are not in it. Several large markets (Austin, Henderson, New York) record no value at all. And a production builder's filed value for a spec home is not what you would pay that builder to build a custom house on your own lot.