Additionally, more than a third of new homes currently have three or more bathrooms — triple the 12% from 1987.

By Manuel Gutierrez, Consulting Economist to NKBA

A total of 1.29 million new homes were completed last year, of which 912,000 were single-family homes and the remaining 375,000 were units in multifamily buildings. These new homes accounted for 3.26 million bathrooms.

The new single-family houses completed last year included a total of 2.56 million new bathrooms (Figure 1). This number is marginally higher than the total for 2019, when 2.51 million bathrooms were built in single-family homes.

Of note is that this number has more than doubled in 10 years. In 2011, only 1.19 million new bathrooms were built. The increase in the number of bathrooms in single-family homes over this period is because of more homes being built as well as more bathrooms per home. The number of single-family home rose from 447,000 in 2011 to last year’s 912,000, leading to the number of bathrooms rising from 1.19 million in the earlier year to 2.56 million last year (Figure 2).

The number of bathrooms built in new single-family homes has doubled in 10 years, paving the way for a significant increase in future remodels.

Despite these gains, the total number of bathrooms built last year is a shade lower than it was in 1987, the earliest year for which there is such data.

The average number of bathrooms per house has increased over the last 33 years, from an average of 2.29 in 1987 to 2.8 last year.

Houses with one or one-and-a-half bathrooms are almost non-existent today. Only 3% of all new single-family homes fall into this group, down from 17% in 1987. Conversely, while 12% of homes built in 1987 had three or more baths, today more than one-third of all single-family homes fit that criteria. The average number of bathrooms per home (right panel, Figure 1), rose from 2.3 in 1987 to the 2.8 shown in the chart.

In the Multifamily sector, new units generated 702,000 bathrooms, 5% more than in 2019.

Similarly, the number of bathrooms in multifamily units has also more than doubled since 2010, when there were 301,000.

In contrast to single-family homes, however, the average number of bathrooms in new multifamily units has generally been falling since 2010 and earlier. The current figure of 1.87 bathrooms per home is the direct result of fewer multifamily housing units built as condominiums. Although data is not available to measure this, it is known that houses built to be sold as condominiums are generally larger and have more bathrooms than those built for rental purposes. Back in 2005, about a third of new multifamily homes were built to be sold as condominium units, with the remainder rental units. Last year, just 5% of units were built as condominiums.

Regionally, the Northeast and West posted the highest average number of bathrooms. Last year, each generated an average of 2.87 per home, above the national average of 2.8. The West has always led in average number of bathrooms, but the more recent growth in the Northeast has been notable. In the late 1980s, this region had the lowest average.

The South, shown by the blue line in Figure 3, matches the U.S. average of 2.8. This is not surprising, since that region accounts for over half of total homes completed in the U.S., so its numbers tend to mirror national averages.

The region with the fewer number of bathrooms is the Midwest, where single-family homes last year average of 2.66 bathrooms each.

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