Report suggests most homes last 100+ years

Nearly 99 percent of all homes that existed in the U.S. in 2011 were still erect two years later, according to the National Association of Homebuilders’ recent release, Data Imply Most Homes Last More than a Century.

In 2011, 132.42 million homes existed in the country, and of those, 130.85 million were still there two years later. This is based on data from the American Housing Survey, which led to the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s report Components of Inventory Change: 2011-2013. The survey revisits the same housing every other year to determine which units are still standing.

Approximately 1.567 million housing units were lost in the two-year period. Nearly half of a million are gone thanks to demolitions and disasters, while 202,000 homes were put to non-residential use and 161,000 (mainly mobile homes) were moved. Nearly 100,000 were lost due to mergers, and 424,000 others were lost due to other reasons not determined or categorized.

Based on these results, about half of a percent of current housing units are lost each year, the NAHB reported. However, mobile homes are more likely to be lost, compared to single-family detached homes, which are the most common type of home in the U.S., representing nearly 62 percent of all existing homes in 2011. Yet, single-family detached homes represented less than half of the units lost between 2011 and 2013.

The age of the home also has an impact on its existence. Homes built in 1950 or after are around .5 percent likely to be lost, while homes built prior to 1950 have a loss rate of about 1 percent. NAHB predicts that if these rates remain the same, at least half of homes built recently will last at least a century.

The loss rate also varies depending on age of the home. In general, the rate hovers around half a percent a year for homes built in 1950 or later, but jumps to slightly over 1 percent for homes built earlier than that.  If these numbers remain consistent, they imply that half of the existing homes built 64 or more years ago will still exist 66 years from now—also, that half of the homes built recently will last for more than 100 years.