Nearly 60% of the 876,000 single-family homes started in 2018 came with patios, according to a National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) analysis of data from the Survey of Construction (SOC) conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau. The share of new homes with patios is at its highest level since NAHB began tracking the series in 2005, according to NAHB's Eye on Housing blog.
From the start of the downturn in 2007 through 2011, the share of new homes with patios was consistently under 50%—as low as 44.8% in the trough of 2009. In 2012, the share jumped to 52.4% and has been consistently climbing ever since, finally breaking above 59% in 2017.
As usual, there were very large differences in the share of new homes with patios across the nine Census divisions in 2018. At the low end, 21% of new single-family homes built in the Middle Atlantic and 22% in New England came with patios. At the high end, the incidence of patios on new homes was 77% in the West South Central and also over 65% in both the Mountain and Pacific divisions.
To some extent, patios and decks seem to be substitutes for each other, as patios on new homes tend to be more common homes where decks are relatively uncommon. The extreme case is the West South Central where 77% of new homes had patios in 2018 where, as a previous post has shown, only 4% had decks.
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