With the U.S. suffering a housing supply shortage estimated at some 4 million units, homebuilders are playing a critical role in closing the gap.
A recent analysis from the National Association of Realtors® considered where new-home construction grew the most in 2025, with demand, land supply, and local regulations all playing a role in regional differences.
Tied for first place in growth was Tennessee’s Wilson County, an exurban area east of Nashville, where sales of newly built homes surged 44% last year compared with 2024.
Splitting first was Maricopa County, AZ, which includes Phoenix and the surrounding areas, also at 44% growth but from a much larger base, following a construction boom in the area to accommodate recent growth.
Among the top 10 counties for growth in new-home sales, nine were in the South and West, including two counties each in Tennessee, North Carolina, and Arizona.
“The South and West remain home to the highest share of new-construction activity, and these high-growth counties reflect the trends we’ve been seeing in the new-construction space,” says Realtor.com® senior economist Joel Berner.
“These Southern and Western states generally have more permissive zoning and building codes, which enable builders to deliver high volumes of affordable inventory to these growing locales,” he adds.
The one outlier in the top 10, as the only Midwestern location, is Will County, IL, which includes Joliet on the far southwest outskirts of Chicago.
New-home sales surged 24% in Will County last year, while the median square footage of new homes sold dropped 23%, possibly indicating a surge in condo construction.
“Will County is certainly the odd duck in this list both in that it is located in the Midwest and in that the median size of new homes fell so sharply,” says Berner. “This is likely a small sample size issue, but it does illustrate that builders are working to provide smaller and more affordable homes in the counties that allow them to do so.”
Berner notes that the top 10 list notably excludes any counties in the Northeast, where complex and burdensome zoning regulations along with higher costs of land and labor make new construction pricier and more difficult.
Regionally, the South saw new-construction sales decline by 3.7%, despite remaining the largest region for new-home construction.
In the Midwest, builders completed and sold slightly more new homes than in the prior year (+0.5%), while the West experienced the largest year-over-year increase in new-construction sales (+2.4%).
The NAR analysis considered 267 counties that had at least 1,500 total sales, and covered January to October for the years in question.