Supply Chain Disruptions and Housing Inventory

An interesting question: Is how many of these units under construction are due to supply chain constraints. Census will release data next year on the length of time from start to completion, and that will probably show long delays in 2021. In 2020, it took an average of 6.8 months from start to completion for single family homes, and 15.4 months for buildings with 2 or more units.

For single family homes, starts have been at about the same level for over a year, so – in normal times – we’d expect completions to be at about the same level as starts. With some simple calculations, it seems that supply chain issues have delayed the completion of somewhere between 70,000 and 150,000 single family homes that would have normally been completed by November.