![Nearly 3 Million Homes Across U.S. Are Overcrowded [New LendingTree Report]](/media/k2/items/cache/fca24f78c53fe806d7964492a68151a1_XL.jpg)
Houses in the U.S. have gotten significantly larger over the last several decades. In 1973, the median size of a newly built home was 1,525 square feet. By 2023, the median was 2,233 square feet.
Despite this extra space, not everyone has access to tons of room. Overcrowding remains a problem in some parts of the country. LendingTree’s latest analysis of housing data finds that nearly 3 million homes across the 50 largest metros are overcrowded.
- Overcrowding is most common in three California metros — Los Angeles, Riverside and San Jose. In Los Angeles, 10.44% of housing units have 1.01 or more inhabitants per room. In Riverside and San Jose, those figures are 8.87% and 7.71%, respectively.
- Pittsburgh and Cleveland are the only featured metros where fewer than 1.00% of housing units are overcrowded. Respectively, 0.77% and 0.90% of homes in these metros are overcrowded.
- In each of the nation’s largest metros, renters are more likely to live in overcrowded houses than homeowners. On average, the share of overcrowded renter-occupied housing units is 3.86 percentage points higher than that of overcrowded owner-occupied housing units.
- Overcrowding issues haven’t gotten much worse since 2012 but haven’t notably improved either. From 2012 to 2022, the overall share of overcrowded housing units increased by an average of only 0.17 percentage points.
You can check out our full report here: https://www.lendingtree.com/home/mortgage/overcrowded-study/
LendingTree's Senior Economist and report author, Jacob Channel, had this to say:
"Overcrowding is largely the result of a lack of affordable housing. At the moment, the U.S. puts too much emphasis on building unnecessarily large and expensive homes in suburbs and not enough focus on building multi-family units in cities. Until this is addressed, overcrowding will likely remain an issue in many large metropolitan areas."
