As American as Mom, Apple Pie, Politics ... and Porches?

Of the roughly 850,000 new single-family homes that were started in 2017, 64.7% were built with porches, according to NAHB tabulation of data from the U.S. Census Bureau's Survey of Construction. That's been a steady trend for the last eight years or so. Porches were most popular in the states making up the Bureau's east south central division - Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Kentucky - where 89% of homes were built with them. They were least popular - at 52% of new starts - in the vast middle area of the country between Texas and North Dakota. Interestingly, when single-family housing starts peaked at 1.7 million in 2005, only about 54% of homes featured porches. According to the NAHB's Eye on Housing report, front porches are far more popular than rear or side porches, and average about 100 square feet in size.