Share of New Homes with Patios Sets Record for Sixth Consecutive Year

The share of homes built with patios hit a record high in 2021.  Of the roughly 1.1 million single-family homes started in 2021, 63 percent came with patios.  This number comes from NAHB tabulation of data from the Survey of Construction (conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau with partial finding from the Department of Housing and Urban Development).  Patios on new homes have become increasingly common recently, and 2021 marks the sixth consecutive year that the share of new homes with patios hit a record high.

From the start of the downturn in 2007 through 2011, the share of new homes with patios was consistently under 50 percent—as low as 44.8 percent in the trough of 2009.  In 2012, the share jumped to 52.4 percent and has been consistently climbing ever since.  The incidence of patios on new homes has now increased in each of the past twelve years, except for 2015 when it remained unchanged.

The geographic incidence of new homes with patios still in general resembles the pattern described in last year’s post.  At the low end of the scale, only 17 percent of new single-family homes built in the Middle Atlantic and 28 percent in New England came with patios in 2021.  At the high end, the incidence of patios on new homes was over 70 percent in the West South Central and South Atlantic divisions, and only a little under 70 percent in the Mountain states.

The SOC data tell us how many new homes have patios but don’t provide detail about the nature of the patios.  Some of this detail, however, is available from the Annual Builder Practices Survey (BPS) conducted by Home Innovation Research Labs.  Unlike the SOC, the BPS explicitly includes pool decks in its patio category.

For the U.S. as a whole, the 2022 BPS report (based on homes built in 2021) shows that the average size of a patio on a new single-family home is just a little under 300 square feet.  However, there is considerable geographic variation, with the average new-home patio reaching nearly 400 square feet in New England and the South Atlantic but falling to as low as 197 square feet in the West North Central, 210 square feet in the Mountain Division, and 229 square feet in the West South Central.

On a square foot basis, poured concrete continues to be builders’ overwhelming favorite material for patios, except in the New England and Mid Atlantic divisions where concrete and brick pavers, respectively, are more common.