The United States has 146,740,960 homes, and about two in three of the households in them own the place they live.[1] The median home went up in 1981, which makes it 43 years old today, not the fresh construction most people picture.
Every core number here comes from one place, the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, instead of the mixed-year grab-bag most housing pages serve.
The country holds 146,740,960 housing units, 132,737,144 of them occupied and 14,003,818 vacant.
About two in three American households own their home, 65.3%, and 34.7% rent.
The typical home is worth $360,600, one of at least four “median prices” that count different homes.
The median home was built in 1981, making it 43 years old, and 48.1% of all housing predates 1980.
West Virginia has both the highest homeownership rate of any state, 75.5%, and the lowest median home value, $170,800.
Here is the full picture, from the stock itself to the people who own it.
On the map
Median home value by state, mapped
Shaded by rank, darkest = most valuable (No. 1, Hawaii at $875,900). DC is a federal district and is left off this ranking.Shaded by median home value, darkest = highest ($875,900, Hawaii); lightest = lowest ($170,800, West Virginia).
Source: US Census Bureau, ACS 2024 1-year estimates, table B25077 (median owner-occupied home value).
The table below carries all 51 places, the 50 states plus the District of Columbia, on six measures at one vintage. Sort any column, or pick a state to line it up against the national row.
State
Total housing units
Owner share
Median home value
Median year built
Median rooms
Median gross rent
Alabama
2,381,771
71.0%
$233,300
1987
5.9
$1,077
Alaska
329,757
66.5%
$376,500
1986
4.8
$1,444
Arizona
3,299,178
67.8%
$426,000
1994
5.4
$1,672
Arkansas
1,421,029
67.1%
$215,600
1989
5.5
$982
California
14,877,017
55.8%
$759,500
1977
5.0
$2,104
Colorado
2,662,111
65.9%
$574,600
1989
5.8
$1,822
Connecticut
1,554,057
66.7%
$396,900
1967
5.6
$1,550
Delaware
476,415
73.8%
$371,600
1988
6.1
$1,530
District of Columbia*
368,700
40.9%
$733,400
1960
3.7
$1,931
Florida
10,629,845
68.0%
$396,900
1990
5.2
$1,812
Georgia
4,668,796
66.3%
$343,300
1993
5.9
$1,506
Hawaii
572,824
61.6%
$875,900
1981
4.6
$1,942
Idaho
832,052
71.7%
$446,400
1993
5.8
$1,384
Illinois
5,482,133
67.6%
$280,700
1971
5.6
$1,322
Indiana
3,026,101
70.7%
$243,500
1977
5.9
$1,104
Iowa
1,458,471
71.3%
$227,300
1973
6.0
$981
Kansas
1,310,001
68.1%
$238,700
1976
6.0
$1,079
Kentucky
2,051,004
68.1%
$226,000
1983
5.7
$998
Louisiana
2,138,882
68.1%
$223,200
1983
5.5
$1,064
Maine
764,713
73.3%
$341,900
1978
5.5
$1,210
Maryland
2,588,337
67.8%
$436,300
1980
6.2
$1,721
Massachusetts
3,057,853
62.4%
$607,400
1965
5.5
$1,848
Michigan
4,669,109
73.5%
$254,200
1972
5.9
$1,168
Minnesota
2,597,229
71.6%
$344,600
1979
6.0
$1,291
Mississippi
1,359,223
70.5%
$186,500
1987
5.7
$990
Missouri
2,858,527
68.6%
$254,400
1978
5.7
$1,067
Montana
539,622
68.6%
$425,400
1983
5.6
$1,177
Nebraska
880,521
66.7%
$263,100
1976
6.1
$1,102
Nevada
1,365,893
60.1%
$455,500
1997
5.3
$1,709
New Hampshire
657,198
72.6%
$458,800
1980
5.6
$1,558
New Jersey
3,816,432
63.9%
$496,000
1971
5.6
$1,800
New Mexico
973,944
71.1%
$279,900
1985
5.3
$1,117
New York
8,676,911
54.3%
$449,800
1959
4.9
$1,634
North Carolina
5,073,509
66.8%
$333,000
1993
5.6
$1,338
North Dakota
380,994
61.2%
$266,100
1985
5.8
$980
Ohio
5,336,168
68.0%
$239,800
1971
6.0
$1,090
Oklahoma
1,800,427
65.7%
$222,100
1982
5.5
$1,044
Oregon
1,896,851
63.1%
$497,500
1982
5.3
$1,597
Pennsylvania
5,861,320
69.3%
$277,600
1966
6.0
$1,252
Rhode Island
488,011
63.5%
$455,700
1964
5.4
$1,418
South Carolina
2,531,310
72.3%
$299,500
1993
5.8
$1,272
South Dakota
423,705
68.3%
$289,600
1984
5.9
$999
Tennessee
3,243,954
66.8%
$332,600
1988
5.7
$1,284
Texas
12,616,736
62.3%
$313,200
1994
5.4
$1,475
Utah
1,283,206
69.6%
$545,200
1994
6.3
$1,593
Vermont
343,166
73.2%
$352,800
1977
5.6
$1,319
Virginia
3,746,211
67.1%
$403,500
1985
6.0
$1,646
Washington
3,400,980
62.9%
$602,200
1987
5.4
$1,824
West Virginia
866,433
75.5%
$170,800
1977
6.0
$883
Wisconsin
2,820,538
68.0%
$294,700
1976
5.6
$1,142
Wyoming
281,789
71.7%
$339,500
1982
5.8
$998
United States
146,740,960
65.3%
$360,600
1981
5.5
$1,487
All values: US Census Bureau, ACS 2024 1-year estimates (tables B25001, B25003, B25077, B25035, B25018, B25064). The District of Columbia (*) is a federal district, shown for comparison; the United States row is the national total. Click any column header to sort.[1]
The District of Columbia is a federal district, not a state. It sits below every state at 40.9% ownership and 3.7 median rooms, and stays in the table for comparison.[1] Two more extremes: Utah has the biggest homes by rooms, at 6.3, and the five cheapest states by value, led by West Virginia, top out at Louisiana’s $223,200.[1]
The stock
How many homes are in the US?
There are 146,740,960 housing units in the country. Of those, 132,737,144 are occupied and 14,003,818 sit vacant.[1] A housing unit is any separate living quarters, from a house or an apartment to a mobile home or a single rented room.
That vacant count is 9.5% of the stock, and it does not mean abandoned houses. It counts seasonal and vacation homes, units listed for rent or sale, and places already sold or rented that are waiting for someone to move in. For a tighter market read, Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies puts rental vacancy at 7.3% and for-sale vacancy at just 1.13%.[4]
What kind of buildings Americans live in. Two out of three homes are single-family houses, and 61.1% are freestanding detached houses. Each segment is sized to its share of all 146.7 million units.
67.4%19.5%7.5%5.4%
Single-family houses 67.4%Buildings with 5+ apartments 19.5%2 to 4 unit buildings 7.5%Mobile homes 5.4%Boats, RVs, and vans 0.1%
Source: US Census Bureau, American Community Survey, table B25024 (all housing units).[1]
Ownership
What percentage of Americans own their home?
About two in three American households own the home they live in, 65.3% to be exact, and 34.7% rent.[1] Two separate Census surveys land on that same rate, which is rare agreement for housing data.[1][2] The Federal Reserve counts it differently and gets 63%, because it measures adults, not households. Both are right for what they count.[5]
That rate has barely moved across a lifetime. It started at 62.9%. It climbed for four decades to a peak of 69.2%, then gave every bit of it back, landing on 62.9% again, the exact number it began at.[2] Today it sits at 65.3%, near the middle of its whole 60-year range.
Sixty years of the US homeownership rate. The line climbed for four decades to a 69.2% peak, gave all of it back to 62.9%, the exact level it started at, and now sits at 65.3%. It draws in as you scroll.
Source: US Census Bureau Housing Vacancies and Homeownership survey, via FRED series RHORUSQ156N (245 quarterly points).[2]
Price
What is the median home price in the US?
There is no single median home price. There are at least four, and mixing them up is the most common mistake on housing pages. This page leads with the whole stock. The typical American home is worth $360,600, the value owners themselves put on it, counting millions that have not changed hands in decades.[1]
The other three prices each measure a smaller slice of the market, so they should never be averaged or drawn as one trend line.
Four different “median home prices,” each counting a different set of homes. They should never be averaged together or drawn as one trend line.
Which price
Median
What it counts
Source
Owner-estimated value
$360,600
The whole stock, what owners think it would sell for
The $360,600 figure is the whole existing stock; the other three measure much smaller slices of the market.
Age
How old is the average American home?
The median American home was built in 1981, which makes it 43 years old, a subtraction the Census Bureau’s own definitions spell out.[1] Below that midpoint sit 70,645,087 homes, nearly half of everything standing at 48.1%, all built before 1980. Another 11.5% predate 1940.[1]
The 1970s put up more of today’s housing than any other decade, 20,140,924 homes still standing, or 13.7%. The 2010s added just 9.7%, the smallest share of any full decade. And the gap between states is wide. Nevada’s median home was built in 1997, New York’s in 1959, a 38-year spread from the newest state stock to the oldest, with the newest clustered in fast-growing Sun Belt states.[1]
When America’s homes were built. The 1970s put up more of the housing still standing than any other decade, 20.1 million units. The 2010s added the smallest share of any full decade.
2020 or later partial bin4.1%
2010–20199.7%
2000–200913.6%
1990–199911.8%
1980–198912.6%
1970–197913.7%
1960–19699.6%
1950–19599.1%
1940–19494.2%
1939 or earlier partial bin11.5%
Source: US Census Bureau, ACS 2024 table B25034. The “2020 or later” and “1939 or earlier” bins are open-ended, so they are not full ten-year decades.[1]
Size
How big is the average American house?
There is no single average house size. The answer depends on which homes you count, and the Census does not measure the existing stock in square feet at all.[1] What it does measure: the median home has 5.5 rooms. Three-bedroom homes are the biggest group at 38.3% of all units, ahead of two-bedroom homes at 24.8% and four-bedroom homes at 17.9%.[1]
The square-footage numbers you see elsewhere describe different homes. The median home listed for sale runs about 1,842 square feet.[7] But that covers the roughly 1.1 million homes on the market, not the 146.7 million that exist. New construction runs larger still.
How many bedrooms the typical home has. Three-bedroom homes are the largest single group at 38.3%. The median home has 5.5 rooms in total, counting rooms the Census does not call bedrooms.
Studio (no bedroom)3.1%
1 bedroom10.8%
2 bedrooms24.8%
3 bedrooms38.3%
4 bedrooms17.9%
5 or more bedrooms5.1%
Source: US Census Bureau, ACS 2024 table B25041 (all housing units).[1]
Owners and renters
Do homeowners earn more than renters?
Owners and renters live in different economies. The median owner household earns $100,721. The median renter household earns $54,446. That is about $46,000 more a year, close to double.[1] Owner households are bigger too, 2.63 people on average against 2.26 for renters.[1]
The sharper split is age. Barely one in three households headed by someone under 35 own their home, at 35.4%. For households headed by someone 65 or older, it is nearly four in five, at 78.6%.[1] Households headed by someone 55 or older, the group weighing the best states to retire, hold 47,636,235 homes. That is 55.0% of all owner-occupied housing in the country.[1]
The Federal Reserve’s SHED survey counts adults rather than households, and it measures ownership at 71% for White adults, 47% for Black adults, 50% for Hispanic adults, and 66% for Asian adults.[5]
Owners and renters live in different economies. The median owner household earns 1.85 times what the median renter earns, runs a bit larger, and skews much older. Each bar is labeled with its value.
Median household income
Owners$100,721
Renters$54,446
Average household size
Owners2.63
Renters2.26
Own their home, by age of head
Age 65+78.6%
Under 3535.4%
Source: US Census Bureau, ACS 2024 tables B25119 (income), B25010 (household size), and B25007 (ownership by age of householder).[1]
The state outlier
Which state has the highest homeownership rate?
West Virginia has the highest homeownership rate of any state, 75.5%, clear of second-place Delaware at 73.8%.[1] It is a double outlier. It also has the lowest median home value of any state, $170,800, and the lowest median rent, $883 a month. Yet its homes are not small, with a median 6.0 rooms against the national 5.5.[1]
Flip the list and the pattern holds. The lowest-ownership states are also the priciest: New York at 54.3%, California at 55.8%, and Hawaii, where the median home is worth $875,900, or 5.1 times West Virginia’s.[1] So owning is most common where homes cost the least. The homeownership rate measures access, not wealth, which is why the richest and poorest states in America are separate lists.
Every state’s housing, mapped by age. Each tile is a state, colored by the median year its homes were built, from New York’s 1959 to Nevada’s 1997. The Sun Belt built late; the Northeast built early.
1966 or older (5)1967-1973 (6)1974-1980 (12)1981-1987 (15)1988-1993 (9)1994 or newer (4)
Source: US Census Bureau, ACS 2024 table B25035 (median year structure built). Tile labels show the median year built; DC is a federal district, shown for comparison.[1]
The gap
How many homes is the US short?
No one agrees. And any page that hands you one confident number is hiding the spread. The published estimates run from a shortage of a few million homes to a warning that the country could end up with a surplus, depending on who is counting and how far out they look.
Published estimates of the US housing gap disagree, because they use different methods and different time horizons.
The estimates span a shortage of a few million homes to a possible future surplus. No single number is the answer.
Saturday Night Science
Methodology: where these numbers come from
What we measured: the size of the housing stock, what it is made of, how old it is, how much it is worth, and who owns it, for the country and for all 50 states plus the District of Columbia.
Where the data comes from: the stock, house-attribute, and state figures are American Community Survey 1-year estimates, the most recent release from the Census Bureau, drawn from tables B25001 through B25119 (Puerto Rico is out of scope).[1] The homeownership arc and the new-home price come from Census Bureau quarterly series published through the Federal Reserve’s FRED, current to the first quarter of 2026.[2] Third-party figures from Harvard’s Joint Center, the Federal Reserve’s SHED survey, the National Association of Realtors, and Realtor.com carry their own source and date every time they appear.
How we ranked it: rankings compare the 50 states, and the District of Columbia stays in every table and map for comparison but is flagged as a district. Median home age is the survey year minus the median year built, the same arithmetic the ACS subject definitions use.
Known limits: the ACS measures rooms and bedrooms, not square feet, so no square-footage figure here describes the existing stock. Small-state estimates carry wider error margins, so this article avoids any ranking that turns on a gap inside those margins.
The vintage ladder: which release each number comes from
ACS 2024 — the stock, house attributes, and all 51 state-level figures (one survey year)
FRED, through Q1 2026 — the homeownership rate and the new-home sale price, quarterly
Cited in place — Harvard JCHS, Fed SHED, NAR, and Realtor.com, each dated where it appears
Housing pages age badly. Every core number here comes from a single survey, and every exception says so.
Bottom line
America has 146,740,960 homes. The typical one went up in 1981, has 5.5 rooms and three bedrooms, and is worth $360,600 by its owner’s estimate. About two in three households own where they live.
But the deeds skew old: households headed by someone 55 or older hold 55.0% of all owner-occupied homes, while just 35.4% of under-35 households own at all. The stock is old, the owners are older, and the freestanding single-family house still describes 61.1% of everything standing. That is the real shape of American housing, and it is nothing like the new-construction country most pages imply.
The other end
The cheapest states by median home value:
West Virginia
Mississippi
Arkansas
Frequently asked questions
How much is rent in the US?
The median gross rent in the US is $1,487 a month in the most recent Census data. Gross rent counts utilities along with the rent itself, so it reflects the full monthly cost. West Virginia has the cheapest state median at $883, while California tops the list at $2,104.
What share of US homes are single-family?
Single-family houses make up 67.4% of all US homes, counting both detached and attached houses. Detached houses alone are 61.1% of the stock. Buildings with five or more apartments hold another 19.5% of the country’s housing units, and mobile homes account for 5.4%.
How many homes in the US are vacant?
The US has 14,003,818 vacant homes, or 9.5% of all housing units. Vacant does not mean abandoned. The Census count includes vacation homes, units listed for rent or for sale, and homes that are already sold or rented but still waiting for the new household to move in.
When did homeownership peak?
US homeownership peaked at 69.2% of households in 2004. By 2016 the rate had fallen back to 62.9%, exactly where the Census series started in 1965. It now sits at 65.3%, close to the middle of that six-decade range.
What’s the most common way homes are heated?
Utility gas is the most common heating fuel in US homes, warming 46.6% of occupied units. Electricity has nearly caught up at 41.8%. Fuel oil heats 3.5% of homes, wood heats 1.3%, and solar heats 0.4%.
References
Sources
US Census Bureau. “American Community Survey, 2024 1-year estimates” (tables B25001, B25002, B25003, B25007, B25010, B25018, B25024, B25034, B25035, B25040, B25041, B25064, B25077, B25119). 2024. census.gov/programs-surveys/acs
US Census Bureau, via Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (FRED). “Homeownership Rate in the United States (RHORUSQ156N),” Housing Vacancies and Homeownership survey. 2026. fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RHORUSQ156N
US Census Bureau, via FRED. “Median Sales Price of Houses Sold for the United States (MSPUS).” 2026. fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MSPUS
Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University. “The State of the Nation’s Housing 2026.” 2026. jchs.harvard.edu
National Association of Realtors. “2025 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers” and “2026 Home Buyers and Sellers Generational Trends.” 2025-2026. nar.realtor/research-and-statistics
Realtor.com Residential Listings, via FRED. “Active Listing Count (ACTLISCOUUS)” and “Median Listing Size in Square Feet (MEDSQUFEEUS).” 2026. fred.stlouisfed.org
New York Times / Fortune roundup (Nov. 2025); Brookings Institution (2023); Mortgage Bankers Association white paper (June 2026), housing-shortage estimates. 2023-2026.
Chris Kolmar has been in the real estate business for almost ten years now. He originally worked for Movoto Real Estate as the director of marketing before founding HomeSnacks.
He believes the key to finding the right place to live comes down to looking at the data, reading about things to do, and, most importantly, checking it out yourself before you move.
If you've been looking for a place to live in the past several years, you've probably stumbled upon his writing already.
