The Census Bureau released the latest construction spending numbers for September 2026 on November 2, and they showed overall construction spending fell 1.9% from August and was down 2.7% year over year.
Spending on private projects likewise fell 2.4% from August and residential construction fell 5.5%.
Maor Greenberg, co-founder and CEO of Spacial, an AI-powered structural engineering platform for residential construction and a 19-year veteran of the construction and real estate industries, shared the following comments about the latest construction spending data.
- High-level takeaway: “September’s numbers are showing more of the pressure we’ve been expecting from higher interest rates. Builders are being more careful about starting new projects, and that’s understandable when financing is expensive, and there’s still so much uncertainty.”
- Builders’ conundrums: “There’s another side: Many builders already have money tied up in land, and every month they wait costs them more. At some point, delaying a project can become just as expensive as moving forward. Over the next few months, we’ll watch whether builders keep holding back or start pushing projects forward despite the higher costs.”
- The bottom line: “Demand for housing is still there, but the economics of building homes have become much harder.”
