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Housing Stock – Age

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This indicator reports, for a given geographic area, the median year in which all housing units (vacant and occupied) were first constructed. The year the structure was built provides information on the age of housing units. These data help identify new housing construction and measures the disappearance of old housing from the inventory, when used in combination with data from previous years. This data also serves to aid in the development of formulas to determine substandard housing and provide assistance in forecasting future services, such as energy consumption and fire protection.

Source

Source Description

The American Community Survey (ACS) is a nationwide survey designed to provide communities with reliable and timely social, economic, housing, and demographic data every year. The ACS has an annual sample size of about 3.5 million addresses, with survey information collected nearly every day of the year. Data are pooled across a calendar year to produce estimates for that year. As a result, ACS estimates reflect data that have been collected over a period of time rather than for a single point in time as in the decennial census, which is conducted every 10 years and provides population counts as of April 1. The Census Bureau combines 5 consecutive years of ACS data to produce estimates for geographic areas with fewer than 65,000 residents. These 5-year estimates represent data collected over a period of 60 months. Because the ACS is based on a sample, rather than all housing units and people, ACS estimates have a degree of uncertainty associated with them, called sampling error. In general, the larger the sample, the smaller the level of sampling error. Data users should be careful in drawing conclusions about small differences between two ACS estimates because they may not be statistically different.

Citation: U.S. Census Bureau: UNDERSTANDING AND USING AMERICAN COMMUNITY SURVEY DATA: WHAT ALL DATA USERS NEED TO KNOW (2018).

For more information about this source, including data collection methodology and definitions, refer to the American Community Survey data user’s website.

Methodology

Median year structure built data are acquired from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey. Data represent estimates for the 5-year period 2019-2023. Median year structure built divides the distribution into two equal parts: one-half of the cases falling below the median year structure built and one-half above the median. The median is rounded to the nearest calendar year.

This indicator cannot be re-summarized or re-calculated to aggregate county-level report areas, or to user-defined geographic boundaries.

For more information on the data reported in the American Community Survey, please see the complete American Community Survey 2023 Subject Definitions.

Data Breakouts Available

  • Renter-Occupied Housing Units by Age, Percentage
  • Renter-Occupied Housing Units by Age, Total
  • Owner-Occupied Housing Units by Age, Percentage
  • Owner-Occupied Housing Units by Age, Total
  • All Housing Units by Age (Time Period Constructed), Percentage
  • All Housing Units by Age (Time Period Constructed), Total
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