Clear Estimates Research
Data briefs on what's driving residential construction costs, built from the pricing data behind Clear Estimates, the estimating software for remodeling contractors. A new brief every few months.
Latest brief · The limits of cost per square foot: what it really costs to build a house in every U.S. ZIP codeA price per square foot leaves out what you build, where you build it, and how big it is. The same Cape Cod costs nearly twice as much in one ZIP code as in another, and $348 a square foot at 800 square feet but $204 at 3,000.Read the brief
Earlier briefs
- Labor or materials: what's driving residential construction cost increases?Since 2019, materials drove about half to three-quarters of the rise in modeled project costs, and labor the rest. Where you build, and what you build, decide the split.
- Labor drives regional cost variations more than the materials: four common projects in 349 marketsWe priced a composite deck, a bathroom remodel, a roof replacement and a two-car garage in all 349 Clear Estimates markets. Materials cost more in some markets than others, but labor varies far more, so the more labor a job takes, the more its price moves.
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Each market's page has this quarter's local prices and what the research found there, next to the median market.
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