Deciding how many bedrooms you’d like in your next home isn’t always just about your family’s sleeping arrangement. Bedrooms, after all, can be converted into many uses. Home offices, for example. Perhaps that’s why Americans now have more extra bedrooms than they’ve ever had before. A new report from the National Association of Realtors’ consumer website found the number of extra bedrooms in the U.S. hit 31.9 million in 2023. That’s more than four times the number of extra bedrooms reported in 1980. Back then, there were just seven million extra bedrooms. Danielle Hale, the website’s chief economist, says the number of bedrooms has been rising while persons per household has fallen. “Since the 1980s, we have seen the average number of bedrooms per home increase, and maybe more importantly, the number of persons per household has declined, creating an environment where we see both the largest number of extra bedrooms and the largest share of extra bedrooms, even with Americans using spare rooms as offices.” (source)
