Map Shows Which States Are Building Most New Homes

Newsweek · Giulia Carbonaro · 2026-11-06 11:33 UTC

South Carolina, Idaho and North Carolina lead on permits, making headway on the housing shortage driving the affordability crisis.

South Carolina, the state with the fastest-growing population in the country, is also the one that is building the most new homes, according to a new analysis by University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) researchers.

From January to August, the state permitted 33,822 housing units, 114 percent above the U.S. rate per resident. Not only was South Carolina doing much better than the national average, but the state was outdoing itself, permitting more new units than it had in previous years. In the first eight months of the year, it signed off 5 percent more new housing units than in the same months in 2025 (32,179) and 11 percent more than it was in the same months in 2023 (29,520), right after the pandemic homebuying frenzy reached its peak and imploded due to the sudden spike in mortgage rates.

By comparison, the nation permitted 968,187 units in the first eight months of the year, up just 0.05 percent from a year earlier. This flat total hides states that are moving hard in the opposite directions, including those responsible for an ill-fated construction boom in the years following the start of the pandemic.

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