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There may not be many homes for sale these days, but there is a lot of housing that is sitting vacant. In fact, the highest in recorded history.
The number of additional bedrooms, which is a bedroom that goes beyond the number of people in the house and even includes one for an office, has reached its highest level since the U.S. Census began tracking the metric in 1970, according to a new report Report from Realtor.com.
Last year, according to the most recent census data available, the number of additional bedrooms reached 31.9 million, up from 31.3 million in 2022. In 1980, there were only 7 million additional bedrooms.
The four-fold increase is due to a decline in the number of people in a given household, from a high of 3.1 people per household in 1970 to a record low of 2.5 people per household in 2023.
“We're seeing more guest rooms for two main reasons: Homes are getting bigger and household sizes are getting smaller,” said Ralph McLaughlin, senior economist at Realtor.com. “We’re also finding that guest rooms are more popular in cheaper areas where it’s more affordable to buy a home with additional bedrooms.”
The average size of a new home grew during the famous “McMansion” era, starting in the 1980s when builders went big. But they stopped growing about a decade ago; Much of this has to do with rising costs as well as energy efficiency and environmental demands from consumers.
The average number of bedrooms per house has increased over the last 50 years, from an average of 2.5 rooms in 1970 to 2.8 rooms in 2023, but there has been no change in the last 10 years.
Regionally, the surplus space trend is highest in the Mountain West and the South, as it is all local real estate. That's simply because there is more land there and homes with larger footprints are being built, the report says. Urban houses have exactly the opposite dynamic.
“If people value extra space, then we didn’t build too much during the McMansion era. But if homebuyers simply tolerate these big houses because they're what's available, then perhaps we've built a little too much in the last few decades,” McLaughlin added.
The 10 markets with the highest percentage of total bedrooms that could be considered inflated are:
- Ogden, Utah (12.2%)
- Colorado Springs, Colorado (12.1%)
- Salt Lake City, Utah (12%)
- Memphis, Tennessee (11.8%)
- Atlanta (11.6%)
- Cleveland (11.3%)
- Wichita, Kan. (11.3%)
- Columbia, S.C. (10.8%)
- Charleston, SC (10.7%)
- Jackson, Miss. (10.7%)
The 10 markets with the lowest proportion of total bedrooms that could be considered inflated are:
- Miami (5.9%)
- Sarasota, Florida. (6.4%)
- New York (6.5%)
- Los Angeles (6.6%)
- New Haven, Connecticut (6.7%)
- Worcester, Massachusetts (6.9%)
- Stockton, California (6.9%)
- Bakersfield, California (7%)
- Honolulu area (7%)
- Providence, Rhode Island (7.1%)