The median number of rooms in an American home increased slightly from 5.4 in 2007 to 5.5 in 2017. Moreover, there seems to be some correlation between the median number of rooms and housing affordability.
The American Community Survey doesn’t ask people the size of their homes in square feet, probably because it assumes most people don’t know. But it does ask how many rooms are in their homes. Survey directions specify that “Rooms must be separated by built-in archways or walls that extend out at least 6 inches and go from floor to ceiling.” People are to “include bedrooms, kitchens, etc.” but “exclude bathrooms, porches, balconies, foyers, halls, or unfinished basements.”
This can be misleading because many homes built since World War II have open floorplans, which usually means the kitchen, dining room, and living room are all one big room. By census definitions, a three-bedroom, open-floorplan home would have four rooms, while a three-bedroom, traditional house would have six rooms even if both have the same number of square feet. The best we can hope for is that the ratio of open- to closed-floorplan homes is about the same in different parts of the country, which seems unlikely. Continue reading
