America’s homes are getting bigger, but more space comes at a price: the backyard.
New single family homes are using land relative to home size at near-record levels, even after considering the number of stories homes have.
It’s a trend that has been taking shape for much of the past three decades as lot sizes continue to shrink and home square footage continues to grow. Homes built since 2015 occupy 25% of the land on which they sit, while homes built in 1975 occupy just 13.9%.
Many people like the idea of living in a single-family home and having a yard to call your own along with some space between themselves and their neighbors. In fact, surveys suggest that even city dwelling millennials aspire to a more traditional American dream of living in a large home in the suburbs and mowing their lawn on weekends. Nearly half, 46% of millennials, would prefer to move into a larger home compared with just 13% who would like to downsize.
Not only does where you live play a big role in how easy it will be find a place to live large inside and out, more importantly, when homes were built will have a big impact on how great of backyard barbeque you can actually hold.
Here are some key takeaways from our analysis:
- Nationally, single family homes occupy 17.4% of the lots on which they sit, regardless of the year they were built.
- Homes built since 2015 occupy 25% of the land on which they sit, while homes built in 1975 occupy just 13.9%. This is being driven by a combination of lots shrinking by 36.2% and home footprints growing by 15.2% size.
- Meanwhile, some of the oldest homes in the country, built in the early 1800s, occupy less than 5.0% of the large lots they are built on. The last time lot usage was nearly as high as it is now was during the early 1900s.
- Don’t mind the neighbors? Single family homes in places like Philadelphia, and San Francisco, which are both geographically small but dense, have the highest lot utilization at 57.7%, and 44.2%, respectively.
- Want plenty of yard space? Head to New England. Three Connecticut metro areas, Worcester, Mass., Hartford, Conn., and Bridgeport, Conn. make up the places with the smallest amount of house occupying lot space, at less than 7.5%.
- While most metro areas have seen lot usage grow since the mid-70s, with Oakland, Calif., and Miami seeing the largest upward swings, six metros have bucked the trend with San Francisco, Memphis, and Long Island, N.Y. moving toward less lot usage.
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