In the first quarter of 2025, San Francisco, Chicago, New York, and Honolulu were some of the U.S. cities with the highest housing construction costs. Meanwhile, Phoenix had one of the lowest construction costs for high-end multifamily homes at *** U.S. dollars per square foot and Las Vegas for single-family homes between *** and *** U.S. dollars per square foot. Construction cost disparities As seen here, the construction cost for a high-end multi-family home in San Francisco in the first quarter of 2024 was over ***** more expensive than in Phoenix. Meanwhile, there were also great differences in the cost of building a single-family house in New York and in Portland or Seattle. Some factors that may cause these disparities are the construction materials, installation, and composite costs, differing land values, wages, etc. For example, although the price of construction materials in the U.S. was rising at a slower level than in 2022 and 2023, several materials that are essential in most construction projects had growth rates of over **** percent in 2024. Growing industry revenue Despite the economic uncertainty and other challenges, the size of the private construction market in the U.S. rose during the past years. It is important to consider that supply and demand for housing influences the revenue of this segment of the construction market. On the supply side, single-family home construction fell in 2023, but it is expected to rise in 2024 and 2025. On the demand side, some of the U.S. metropolitan areas with the highest sale prices of single-family homes were located in California, with San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara at the top of the ranking.

A recent New York Times article examines one of the biggest drivers in a families' decision to leave cities: school. Using data from a number of sources, the New York Times developed charts that look at school performance and median home sale price per square foot for five metro areas including New York/New Jersey, San Francisco, Boston, Chicago, and Minneapolis.For most of the cities studied, home prices rise with the quality of the school district but a number of districts break this pattern. The map shown highlights five Bay Area schools that perform above average, and have below average housing costs.The New York Times used median price per square foot to measure housing costs and the median number of grades ahead (or behind) for school district quality. In the San Francisco Bay Region, the price per square foot was around $500 while students were .28 grades ahead of their grade placement. The five Bay Area schools that were selected had the lowest home prices and the best performing schools in the region.Source: New York Times