The two halves of American housing are now moving in opposite directions, and the gap is widening by geography as well as by product type.
NAHB’s Home Building Geography Index for the second quarter of 2026 shows single-family construction declining in six of seven geographic categories, while multifamily expanded in six of seven. Large metro core counties posted the steepest single-family drop at 13.9%. That’s the fifth consecutive quarterly decline there, though it beats the first quarter’s 15.8% fall, so the rate of deterioration has eased.
Where single-family construction is still growing
One place. Outlying counties in small metro areas returned to growth at 0.9%, after four straight quarters of decline. Everywhere else, from large metro suburbs to non-metro micro counties, went backwards.
The compositional shift underneath is the more durable story. Large metro core counties’ share of the single-family market fell 1.3 percentage points year over year to 14.6%, a new low in the series. Small metro outlying counties picked up 0.8 points to 10.9%. Builders are following land price and entitlement friction outward, and the national numbers hide how far outward.
Multifamily is concentrating where single-family is leaving
Multifamily activity is doing the reverse: concentrating into large metro core and suburban counties, exactly the geographies bleeding single-family starts. That’s not a coincidence so much as the same land economics read two ways. Where a lot won’t pencil as a detached house, it may still pencil at 40 units an acre.
For contractors the practical consequence is a trade mix problem. A residential builder whose crews, suppliers and superintendents are set up for wood-frame detached product doesn’t retool into podium construction in a quarter. Firms that already run both are the ones absorbing the shift.
Worth reading the index with its limits in view. HBGI is NAHB’s own construction on top of Census permit and starts data, not a government statistic, and the growth rates are four-quarter moving averages, which smooths turning points. It’s directionally reliable and slow to signal a bottom.
Multifamily’s expansion is showing up in the pipeline too, from supportive housing like River Avenue Apartments II in the Bronx to purpose-built student housing such as the 833-bed University of Tampa residence hall. Neither is a market-rate apartment tower, and that’s part of the point: what’s getting built in the cores increasingly needs a subsidy, an institution or a captive tenant behind it.