Mapped: The Most Expensive U.S. Cities For Commercial Construction

It costs $534 to build a single square foot of commercial space in New York City, the most expensive place on the planet for new construction, according to Turner & Townsend. 

The cost of construction is expected to keep rising in 2025 — prices for commercial building materials ticked up by 0.2% in June alone. The escalating prices are widening the gap between a handful of America’s most expensive construction markets and practically everywhere else in the country. 

San Francisco, the second-priciest place to build on Earth, joins New York as the only other U.S. city where commercial development costs more than $500 per SF. Los Angeles, at $445 per SF, ranks third nationally and sixth globally. Chicago and Philadelphia round out the top five. 

Nine U.S. markets have construction costs priced above $400 per SF, but the price to build is significantly cheaper outside of primary markets. The Sun Belt, where a wave of development is still underway, also offers a relative bargain. 

President Donald Trump’s trade war and immigration crackdown helped push construction prices up in the first quarter, according to Cumming Group, an international project management and cost consulting company. 

More than two-thirds of U.S. markets face a shortage of skilled construction labor, according to a survey of Turner & Townsend experts across the U.S. who consulted local project teams to gather data.   

The country’s $70-per-hour average construction wage is the third-highest in the world, behind Switzerland and Denmark, according to Turner & Townsend. 

Raw material costs have trended upward over the last 12 months, with new tariffs on specific industries and countries leading to corresponding price jumps, data from Cumming Group shows. The cost of semiprocessed aluminum products jumped 17% in the last year, while copper is up 9.5% and concrete pipes are 7% more expensive. 

Steel pipes got 5% less expensive in the 12 months ending in March, and there were other modest price savings in processed concrete products, sheet metal and plastic products. 

The U.S. clocked $1.24T in total seasonally adjusted nonresidential construction spending in May, a 3.3% increase from the prior year and not far off the December 2023 all-time high of $1.27T, according to the Census Bureau. 

Construction costs vary by market because of differences in the cost of labor, materials and shipping. Meeting local building standards and securing municipal approval impact costs before a shovel ever hits the ground, and the price to get the permits to build swings from market to market. 

Seattle, ranked seventh in the U.S., has pledged to divest from fossil fuels by 2030 and be completely carbon-neutral by 2050. The increased design standards help drive up the hard costs of a new development while also creating demand for refurbishment and retrofits that push up labor costs. 

“Contractors with relevant experience are already coming into Seattle from across the country to cash in on these trends,” Cumming Group researchers wrote in their report. 

It is significantly cheaper to build in even the most expensive Sun Belt markets than on the East or West coasts, in part because of cheaper labor costs. 

The Texas triangle markets of Houston, Dallas, Austin and San Antonio take the four ranks starting at 18th, but the regions have among the highest expected construction cost inflation forecasts for 2025, according to the Turner & Townsend report. 

Developers in markets experiencing a boom in construction can typically find labor in adjacent cities, but all of the top Texas cities have a labor shortage, according to Cumming Group. 

“The costs associated with bringing plumbers in from Tulsa, El Paso, or New Orleans are too high to make these feasible options. Instead, businesses must accept higher labor costs,” the Cumming researchers wrote. 

Labor is expected to remain a key constraint for development moving forward, with just 17% of respondents to the Turner & Townsend report expecting the labor market to improve, while just over a quarter expect that it will get worse. 

“Although over half of the markets expect labour availability to remain unchanged, it is important to consider that the global construction industry is already facing a skilled labour shortage,” the report’s authors wrote. “Labour conditions remaining the same does not necessarily indicate stability, but rather the continuation of existing constraints.”