By
Ben Carlson
As I continue my search for a new home in the real-estate market, I can’t help but think about how different my home-buying experience is from what it was like for my parents or others in previous generations.
First of all the home search process is completely different. Everything is online these days and you can typically see 20-30 pictures of every house that’s on the market on the internet. You can make first-level determinations from your own living room about the types of homes you would like to look at without having to go to dozens of places in person. You can pull up tax records, school district maps and neighborhood reviews on every house on the market. There’s a huge timesaving aspect of being able to cross off the ones you don’t want to physically visit.
But the houses themselves are also completely different than they were in the past. The U.S. Census just released a report on the characteristics of houses going back to the early 1970s which make this abundantly clear:
In 1973, 49% of new homes had no air conditioning. In 2015, just 7% of new houses have no AC.
In 1973, 40% of new homes had 1.5 bathrooms or fewer. In 2015, just 4% have fewer than 1.5 bathrooms.
In 1973, 64% of new houses had three bedrooms while 23% had four bedrooms or more. In 2015, 42% of new houses are three-bedroom while 47% come with four bedrooms or more.
In 1973, the median new house had 1,525 square feet of space. In 2015, the median new house has 2,467 square feet of space.
In 1973, the average size of a U.S. household was 3.01 people. In 2015, the average size of a U.S. household is down to 2.54 people.
Houses today also have wireless internet connectivity, better appliances, and are generally more energy efficient. They aren’t making enough of them in my estimation — and I may be stating the obvious here — but new homes today look better, have more features and are higher quality than those built in the past.
To summarize, houses today have fewer people living in them with more space, more bedrooms, more bathrooms and more comfortable living conditions.
But wait … there’s more.
Mortgage rates are at record lows: