I work for a few ISPs that are lucky enough to be working in counties that are seeing explosive population and new housing growth. Growth has always been uneven across the country, and I decided to take a look at the parts of the country with the fastest growth.

One of the best ways to understand housing growth is to look at permits to build new homes. Historically, 99% of permits to build new single-family homes results in a new home. About 80% of permits for multifamily homes turn into a condominium or apartment.

According to the Census Bureau’s Building Permit Survey, the top five states for permits for single-family homes in 2025, as measured in permits per 100,000 residents, were South Carolina (56), North Carolina (48), Florida (45), Idaho (45), and Delaware (43). At the bottom of the list were New York (4), Connecticut (5), Illinois (6), Rhode Island (6), and Massachusetts (6).

The states with the most permits for multi-family homes, as measured by permits per 100,000 residents, were Washington DC (60), South Dakota (33), Colorado (28), Florida (27), Arizona (27), and Idaho (26). The states at the bottom of this list were Mississippi (2), Rhode Island (3), Michigan (4), Alaska (4), and New Mexico (5).

Since my state of North Carolina had the second-fastest growth in single family-home permits per 100,000 residents, I thought I’d look deeper at the statistics in the state by county. As you might imagine, in most states, there is a wide variance between the counties with the fastest housing growth and the slowest. The following statistics for North Carolina are for total housing permits per 100,000 residents for 2023. The counties with the fastest new housing permits per 100,000 were Brunswick (254), Iredell (115), Warren (110), Pender (100), and Franklin (97). There were 8 counties with fewer than 10 new permits per 100,000 population, all in the eastern part of the state.

North Carolina has less variance in counties from top to bottom than most states, and there is healthy growth happening across most of the state. Other states that have growth in most parts of the state include Washington, Arizona, Florida, Utah, Virginia, and New Hampshire.

None of these statistics says anything about 2026, because the housing industry is infamous for seeing cycles of big booms and busts. The biggest booms since 1970 have been in 1972, 1977, 1984, 2005, and 2021. Some of the worst years for new housing were 1975, 1981, 1990, and 2009.

The housing industry had high hopes that 2026 could be a high-growth year since mortgage interest rates at the end of 2025. Realtors report pent-up demand for people who would like to move or buy a new home. But other factors like the tariffs that affect lumber prices, stagnant new job growth, labor shortages in parts of the country, and overall inflation could also result in a bad year for new housing.

One of the biggest mysteries in the housing industry is understanding the relationship between new housing growth and population growth. The two issues clearly are related, but which comes first? Does building new homes attract new residents, or do developers react to people who were coming anyway?

ISPs that find themselves in the middle of housing booms should count themselves as lucky. It’s something that can disappear almost as quickly as it appeared, but taking advantage of growth is one of the easiest business plans.