The Census Bureau recently updated its Characteristics of New Housing data, revealing the current size and shape of the American household and home.
The size of the median new single-family home continues to grow. Homes completed in 2017 were 14 percent bigger than in 2009, whereas the lots of homes continue to shrink. Over that same period, the median square footage of new-home lots went down 20 percent, from 11,000 sf to 8,800 sf. According to Bloomberg, one reason behind the growth of new-home sizes, “has surely been that Americans in the top 20 percent of the income distribution have a lot more money to spend than they did four decades ago, and many have chosen to maximize their utility by spending some of it on guest bedrooms, home offices and extra bathrooms.”…read more