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There may not be a lot of homes for sale these days, but there is a lot of empty residential space. In fact, the most in recorded history.
The number of additional bedrooms, defined as one more bedroom than the number of people in a home and even including one for an office, has reached the highest level since the U.S. Census began recording that metric in 1970, according to a recent report. New report from Realtor.com
Last year, the most recent census data available, the number of extra bedrooms reached 31.9 million, up from 31.3 million in 2022. Back in 1980, there were just 7 million extra bedrooms.
The four-fold jump comes as the number of people in any household falls, 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: increasing home sizes and decreasing family sizes,” said Ralph McLaughlin, chief economist at Realtor.com. “What's more, we've found that spare rooms are more popular in cheaper areas where it's less expensive to buy a home with extra bedrooms.”
The average size of a new home rose during the popular “McMansion” era, starting in the 1980s, when builders expanded. But it 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.
So the average number of bedrooms per home has risen over the past 50 years, from an average of 2.5 in 1970 to 2.8 in 2023, but no change over the past 10 years.
Looking regionally, since all real estate is local, excess space trends are highest in the Mountain West and in the South. This is simply because there is more land there, and homes are built with larger floor plans, according to the report. Urban homes have exactly the opposite dynamic.
“If people appreciated having extra space, we wouldn't have overbuilt during the McMansion era. But if homebuyers simply tolerated these larger homes because they were what was available, then we might have overbuilt a little over the last few decades,” McLaughlin added.
The 10 markets with the highest share of total bedrooms that could be considered surplus 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, Kansas (11.3%) Columbia , South Carolina (10.8%) Charleston, South Carolina (10.7%) Jackson, Miss. (10.7%)
The 10 markets with the lowest share of total bedrooms that could be considered surplus are:
Miami (5.9%) Sarasota, FL (6.4%) New York (6.5%) Los Angeles (6.6%) New Haven, CT (6.7%) Worcester, MA (6.9%) Stockton, CA (6.9%) Bakersfield, CA (7) %) Honolulu area (7%) Providence, Rhode Island (7.1%)
