The share of homes with patios increased to a new record high for the seventh consecutive year, according to the Survey of Construction. Of the roughly one million single-family homes started in 2022, 63.3% came with patios, an increase from 63.0% in 2021.
Historically, fewer than half of new homes came with patios during the 2008-2011 period of extreme weakness in housing markets After that, the share of new homes with patios jumped to 52.% in 2012 and has been climbing ever since. The percentage has now increased in twelve of the past thirteen years; the lone exception being 2015, when it was unchanged.
While patios on new homes have generally become more popular, the places where they tend to be most and least popular have not changed much. At the low end, only 18% of new single-family homes built in the Middle Atlantic and 21% in New England came with patios in 2022. 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. All these geographic tendencies are similar to the ones reported in last year’s post on patios.
