The U.S. Census Bureau measures new American houses by their floor area. The median new single-family house finished in 2025 had 2,142 square feet (199 square meters) of floor space, and the average one had 2,378 square feet (221 square meters). The 15 meters (49 feet) shown above is the width of the floor plan in the picture. The Census Bureau's survey does not record a house's width, so that figure is not a measured average.

Size

The Census Bureau counts a house's floor area as all of its finished floor space, including finished basements and attics, measured to the outside of the walls. Garages, carports, porches and unfinished rooms are left out.

The median is the middle value: half of the new houses were larger and half were smaller. The average is higher than the median because some houses are much larger than the rest. In 2025, 7% of new houses had 4,000 square feet (372 square meters) or more.

How wide a house is depends on its shape and how many floors it has. In 2025, 48% of new single-family houses had one story, 46% had two, and 5% had three or more. A one-story house with the median floor area, built as a square, would be about 14 meters (46 feet) on each side. With two stories, it would need only about 10 meters (33 feet).

Size comparisons

The median new house has about three-quarters of the area of a doubles tennis court, which measures 78 by 36 feet (23.77 by 10.97 meters).
A square one-story house of that size, 14 meters wide, would be about as wide as eight people 1.7 meters (5 feet 7 inches) tall lying head to toe.
It would also be about one and a half times as wide as the Apollo Lunar Module measured across its landing legs, 9.4 meters (31 feet).
The median new apartment built for rent in 2025 had 1,000 square feet (93 square meters), a little less than half the floor area of the median new house.

How new houses have grown

The Census Bureau's table of floor areas begins in 1973, when the median new single-family house had 1,525 square feet (142 square meters). The median rose to a peak of 2,467 square feet (229 square meters) in 2015, then fell back. Even so, the median new house finished in 2025 had about 40% more floor area than one finished in 1973.

What the survey counts

The figures come from the Census Bureau's Survey of Construction. Its estimates for 2025 cover the 1,005,000 new single-family houses finished that year.

The survey counts only newly built, privately owned houses. It leaves out manufactured homes, also called mobile homes, and it does not describe the older houses already standing. Because it is based on a sample, each figure is an estimate with some sampling error.

Sources

Characteristics of New Housing. U.S. Census Bureau, 2026.
Highlights of 2025 Characteristics of New Housing. U.S. Census Bureau, 2026.
Square Feet of Floor Area in New Single-Family Houses Completed. U.S. Census Bureau, 2026.
Number of Stories in New Single-Family Houses Completed. U.S. Census Bureau, 2026.
Survey of Construction: Definitions. U.S. Census Bureau.
Rules of Tennis 2026. International Tennis Federation, 2026.
Apollo 11 Lunar Module / EASEP. NASA Space Science Data Coordinated Archive.

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