Nearly 20 percent of recent movers identified “convenience to job” as the most important factor in their choice of neighborhood in 2011, according to the 2011 American Housing Survey (AHS), the definitive source of information on the quality of housing in the United States.
For the first time ever, the U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) have made survey results available on the Census Bureau’s American FactFinder data access tool.
A wide range of specific topics is covered in the survey, including plumbing and source of water and sewage disposal; housing problems; householder’s satisfaction with home and neighborhood; value, purchase price and type of home loan; recent home improvement activity and costs; safety features and potential health hazards; features in home providing accessibility to people with disabilities; and socio-economic characteristics of the householder.
Statistics are national-level only and are provided for apartments, single-family homes, manufactured housing, new construction and vacant housing units. Recent movers were also asked how they found their current units. The most common methods for home owners were talking with a real estate agent (20 percent), Realtor.com (17 percent) and word of mouth (16 percent). Highlights on the nation’s 115 million occupied homes:
• The median year these homes were built was 1974, with owner-occupied units being slightly newer (1976 compared with 1972 for renter-occupied).
• The median size of single-family detached and mobile home units is 1,800 square feet, with owner-occupied units being larger (1,800 square feet) than renter-occupied ones (1,300 square feet). Newly constructed units are also usually larger, with a median size of 2,200 square feet.
• Most homes have three or more bedrooms (64 percent). New homes (those built in the last four years) generally have more bedrooms, with 74 percent of them having three or more.
• About half the homes (52 percent) have two or more bathrooms. Again, new units have more bathrooms, with 83 percent of them having two or more.
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