Last year saw a welcome rebound in new home construction in the U.S., but permits for single-family homes are down for the first half of 2025.
There has been a 6.3% drop in single-family home permits nationwide for the six months ending in June, the online real estate site Zillow reported, describing the slowdown as “reflecting shifting builder sentiment.”
The Salt Lake City metro area market is one of the places where the number of permits fell. Here, Zillow found there were 241 fewer total permits for single family homes issued through June this year compared to the first six months of 2024.
Other major metro area markets experienced even bigger declines. The largest was in Jacksonville, Florida, where 2,376 fewer permits have been issued this year through June, followed by San Antonio, Boston, Denver and St. Louis.
Still, U.S. permitting activity in 2025 is 16% higher than before the COVID-19 pandemic, with more than half of the nation’s 50 largest metros authorizing more new builds than their pre-2020 average, the Zillow analysis found.
Orlando topped the list of major metro areas where more permits were issued in the first six months of 2025 compared to the same period last year, with 999, followed by Chicago; Kansas City, Missouri; Oklahoma City; and Cincinnati.
But in 2024, the nationwide numbers were also up, with a 6.6% increase in single-family starts.
Last year’s increase, a turnaround from two years of falling permitting, was “driven by builder optimism, easing mortgage rates, low resale inventory and a 4.7 million-unit housing deficit to address," Zillow said.
Now, though, “overall momentum is clearly weakening,” amid pressure to lower prices and offer incentives to counter sluggish sales, according to Zillow. Buyers have more leverage due to increased inventories across the country, but still struggle to find affordable options.
That’s helped lead to more than 1 in 4 home sellers nationwide reducing their asking prices in June, the most since 2018 for what is traditionally one of the busiest months for home sales, according to another Zillow analysis.
The National Association of Home Builders monthly survey found that in July, 38% of builders had cut the prices of new homes, the biggest share since monthly tracking began in 2022. The average price reduction was 5%.
Polling has also found that many would-be buyers in Utah and across the country are hesitant to make big purchases, like a new home, amid the uncertainty surrounding the economic impact of President Donald Trump’s ever-changing tariff policies.