Kind: Measured report
By Asif Hussain, Founder and CEO, SpecIndex
Since January 2025, we have logged 16,933 apartment and multifamily construction projects across 31 states in SpecIndex's own database of public bid and permit records, worth a combined $37.6 billion, the single largest dollar figure of any building type SpecIndex tracks. Two states, Texas and New York, account for $31 billion of that total, and they get there by opposite routes.
Facts at a glance
- Since January 2025, we have logged 16,933 apartment and multifamily construction projects across 31 states in SpecIndex's own database of public bid and permit records, worth a combined $37.6 billion, the single largest dollar figure of any building type SpecIndex tracks. (From: the opening paragraph.)
- Two states, Texas and New York, account for $31 billion of that total, and they get there by opposite routes. (From: the opening paragraph.)
- The population is the 16,933 projects logged as active since January 1, 2025, across 31 states, worth a combined $37.6 billion. (From: Method note.)
- The headline result was 43 returned positions for Frigidaire. (From: Method note.)
Texas builds fewer and larger, and New York builds more and smaller
The top of the state list is a study in opposites. Texas leads on value with a project count well below New York's, while New York leads on count with a far lower total value.
Texas: 3,506 projects, $25.2 billion. The highest total value in the country, built on a project count well below New York's, which means Texas multifamily construction is concentrated in large scale developments, averaging roughly $7.2 million per project.
New York: 9,372 projects, $5.8 billion. More than half of the national project count, but a lower average project size. New York's multifamily pipeline is wide rather than deep, consistent with a market of smaller infill and mid rise developments across the five boroughs and upstate metros.
North Carolina: 601 projects, $1.7 billion.
Washington: 58 projects, $1.5 billion.
Illinois: 692 projects, $1.1 billion.
Maryland: 206 projects, $489 million.
Arizona: 276 projects, $438 million.
The Texas versus New York contrast is the clearest illustration in SpecIndex's dataset of how differently "multifamily construction" behaves depending on land economics. Texas markets build outward with large garden style and mid rise complexes on comparatively cheap land. New York builds upward and infill, with more, smaller projects competing for less available lot area.
A pipeline financed in the low rate years is still reaching construction
Multifamily is the most interest rate sensitive building type in this dataset by financing structure, yet it also carries the largest live dollar total. Our read of that combination, offered as interpretation rather than as a corpus finding, is that it reflects a pipeline built years before ground breaking. Projects entitled and financed during the low rate cycle of 2021 and 2022 are only now reaching construction, and a project with financing already closed rarely gets shelved over rate movements after the fact.
Our read of what has changed is the mix. Fewer new large scale entitlements are entering the pipeline behind the current wave, which is a forward looking signal this dataset will start to show over the next several quarters as the currently active pipeline works through to completion.
One appliance decision in a manual resolves the same decision in every unit
Multifamily specification sections are lighter than hospital or school sections. Fewer divisions carry manufacturer competition, concentrated instead in unit finishes, building envelope, and life safety systems repeated identically across dozens or hundreds of units. Cited positions from the corpus show how a unit level decision gets written.
In Division 11 (Equipment), the manual for "ITB 19-091 Housing Reconstruction-4487 School" names the basis of design product "Lowe’s Frigidaire FFEF3015LW" (document "3362", page 25 to 25). An appliance model named that way is not a single purchase. It is the package that repeats from unit to unit in the project.
Not every housing position is a basis of design position. On "GAOA Escalante Ranger District Housing Upgrade," the Division 11 (Equipment) section lists acceptable manufacturers without naming a basis of design, Frigidaire is in that approved list, and the section's substitution language is "or approved equal" (document "Attachment 2 - SOW GAOA Escalante Ranger District Housing Upgrad.pdf", pages 207 to 210). The two positions carry different weight, and the manual tells you which is which.
That repetition is what makes multifamily specification wins valuable per project relative to hospital or industrial work. A flooring or appliance spec that clears one 300 unit project manual is effectively 300 individual sales decisions resolved at once, because the one specification decision in the manual resolves the sale in every unit the project builds.
Missing the manual costs more when every unit repeats the decision
A multifamily developer's public announcement, whether a rezoning application, a construction loan closing, or a topping out, says nothing about which appliance package, flooring system, or unit entry hardware the project manual specifies. Because the per project stakes are multiplied by unit count, missing the specification document on a large multifamily project is a bigger loss for a manufacturer than missing an equivalent hospital or warehouse section.
SpecIndex's corpus tracks multifamily projects from their earliest public filing through to the specification sections and unit level manufacturer mentions inside them, state by state.
Method note
We counted apartment and multifamily projects in SpecIndex's own database of public bid and permit records. The population is the 16,933 projects logged as active since January 1, 2025, across 31 states, worth a combined $37.6 billion.
The match rule is the one the article describes: projects the corpus records as apartment and multifamily projects in those public bid and permit records, with state totals taken from the same records. The window is January 1, 2025 onward.
The state figures, including Texas's 3,506 projects and $25.2 billion, New York's 9,372 projects and $5.8 billion, and the $37.6 billion combined value, are retained from the original publication and are dated as of the article's original September 2026 count. The corpus keeps growing, so the figures are dated and later counts will differ.
The two exhibits in the specification section were measured on October 16, 2026, with a find_brand_positions query for Frigidaire. The headline result was 43 returned positions for Frigidaire. From those returns we chose rows on housing projects that carry a citation, and we quoted the specified_product and substitution_language fields exactly as returned, with the project name, document_title, and page span exactly as returned.