Over the last year ending with the first quarter of 2017, custom single-family home starts increased 2 percent over the previous four quarters to 168,000.
NAHB Eye on Housing reports that, as measured on a one-year moving average, the market share of custom home building is now 21 percent, down from a high of 31.5 percent in the second quarter of 2009.
The onset of the housing crisis and the Great Recession interrupted a 15-year long trend away from homes built on the eventual owner’s land. As housing production slowed in 2006 and 2007, the market share of this not-for-sale new housing increased as the number of single-family starts declined.