HWBRIEF
53% of new apartment buildings shipped with the electric appliances in 2025, the same year a $5,000 per unit federal tax credit for energy efficient developers expired.
For the first time on record, more than half of the apartment buildings constructed in the United States last year came with heat pumps, according to new US Census Bureau data. A heat pump is an electric appliance that both heats and cools indoor air.
The 53% figure, up from 46% in 2024, is the first time a national Census count has put multifamily new construction above the 50% mark. It extends a four-year streak in which heat pumps have outsold conventional gas furnaces nationwide. About 48% of new single-family houses, including row houses and town houses, also came with heat pumps in 2025, up from 45% the year before.
In the South, 96% of new apartments are electrically heated. In the Northeast, that share is closer to 52%. Analysts at the Building Decarbonization Coalition and trade outlets ACHR News and HVACP Products attribute the trend to better cold-weather heat-pump technology and rising demand for air conditioning as summers grow hotter.
The milestone lands the same year a $5,000-per-unit federal tax credit, created under the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act to subsidize energy-efficient developers, expired. Whether builders keep choosing heat pumps at the same pace without that subsidy is the open question going forward.