A local construction boss is of the opinion that the cost to develop new housing in Bermuda is already too high for the median household income.

“I reckon they are 50 per cent to 100 per cent too expensive,” Alex DeCouto, president of construction management firm Greymane, said. “The result is that the private sector is completely unable to meet housing demand. Prices are rising at a faster rate than incomes, and have been for many years.”

Mr DeCouto, the co-chairman of the Chamber of Commerce construction division, said building costs are between $700 to $1,000 per square foot at present.

“It depends on a number of factors,” he said.

Estimates per square foot depend on the complexity of how work is priced and the variety in different specifications, he said.

“What I can say is that no one is developing new homes because the cost of doing so, per square foot or by any other measure, exceeds what most people can afford to pay,” he said. “The gap is only getting wider.”

In the United States, buildings typically cost between $150 per square foot and $300 per square foot, according to the website Auto Desk Construction Cloud.

One of the issues Mr DeCouto sees is a lack of information. Bermuda does not collect construction cost data and the census data is a decade old.

He said: “If we had good data on household income, cost of new-build construction, acceptable measures of minimum square footage and people’s needs, average household size, interest rates, average rents and square footage, we could build a model that would tell us where the affordability line is for housing to both build and rent.”