Research study
How many American homes have a garage, and where?
Everyone quotes this number and nobody sources it. We computed it from federal survey data and say exactly what it covers.
Written by HyreGarage Research Desk Primary-source research and data analysis
Audited by HyreGarage Research Desk Citation, computation and retrieval-date audit
The finding
About 51.8 million occupied US homes, or 41.9 percent, have an attached garage. HyreGarage computed this from the Energy Information Administration’s 2020 Residential Energy Consumption Survey (RECS), a weighted federal survey of 18,496 households.
Among single-family houses alone, the share is 61.3 percent. The West leads at 48.6 percent and the Northeast trails at 31.3 percent. Detached garages and carports are not counted.
What we found
The survey stands for 123.5 million occupied US homes. Of those, 51.8 million (41.9 percent) have an attached garage. This counts the homes standing today, not just new construction.
By region: the West leads at 48.6 percent, then the Midwest at 45.6, the South at 40.8 and the Northeast at 31.3. That is a 17-point range.
By home type: RECS only asks the garage question of single-family houses. Among those, 61.3 percent have one. Mobile homes and apartments, 31.6 percent of occupied homes, are coded “not applicable,” not “no.”
What it misses: RECS records attached garages only. It has no field for a detached garage or a carport. A home with a detached two-car garage is recorded the same as a home with no garage.
What does this number measure, and what does it not?
A national number like this is easy to over-read in both directions, so here is its scope first.
RECS asks PRKGPLC1, “Attached garage,” of single-family houses. It has no field for a detached garage and none for a carport. A house with a detached garage is recorded the same as a house with none.
Mobile homes and apartment buildings, 31.6 percent of occupied homes, are coded “not applicable,” not “no.” We keep them in the 41.9 percent base and say so. We also give the single-family-only figure (61.3 percent) so neither reading is hidden.
RECS surveys occupied main homes. Vacant homes and seasonal homes are outside it, and we do not stretch this figure to cover them.
RECS runs about every four to five years, and 2020 is the newest public release. Four to six more years of new homes have been built since, most with a garage (per our flagship page). So our figure is probably a little low today, by an unknown but likely small amount.
The Census Survey of Construction series behind the state of the American garage counts new homes in the year they were finished (a flow). This page counts what stands today (a stock). Do not subtract or average one against the other.
The 2010–2015 and 2016–2020 build-era rows rest on smaller samples than the rest. The RECS 2020 public file does not publish a margin of error for each group. We show the figures and mark them rather than drop a decade.
Why does such a basic fact have no source?
Because the obvious federal surveys do not answer it. Search “what percent of American homes have a garage” and you will find the number everywhere and the source nowhere. That is a real gap in what federal surveys ask, not just lazy writing.
The Census Survey of Construction is the source for our flagship 1971–2025 regional chart. Each year, builders report the parking on the single-family houses they just finished. It is excellent for that. But it only covers houses just finished, so it cannot tell you anything about a house built in an earlier year.
The American Housing Survey (AHS) should be the answer. It is the federal survey of the homes standing today, and its Definitions document (quoted on our pre-1993 openers page) confirms it records garages and carports.
But we could not find a static table with counts. The 2023 results come only through the “AHS Table Creator,” an interactive web app. When we fetched the summary-tables page, it returned only a JavaScript app shell with no table in it.
Someone willing to work that tool by hand in a browser may be able to get a figure. We could not retrieve one as a static file, and we do not make up a number from a tool we could not actually query.
HyreGarage analysis: so we tried a third source. EIA’s Residential Energy Consumption Survey exists to measure home energy use, not garages. But an attached garage changes how much heat a house loses and how hard it is to cool, so the survey needs to know about it. That is why RECS asks PRKGPLC1 at all.
It is also why no one has cited it for this question before: garage-door researchers do not think to look in an energy survey. We downloaded the full public data file and its codebook. Then we computed the national and regional shares ourselves, using the sample weight EIA publishes for exactly this.
Which regions have the most homes with a garage?
The West, at 48.6 percent. This is the share of occupied homes with an attached garage, by Census region, from RECS 2020 data.
| Region | Occupied housing units | With attached garage | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| West | 27.7M | 13.5M | 48.6% |
| Midwest | 27.0M | 12.3M | 45.6% |
| South | 46.8M | 19.1M | 40.8% |
| Northeast | 21.9M | 6.9M | 31.3% |
HyreGarage computation from EIA RECS 2020 public microdata (recs2020_public_v7.csv), weighted using NWEIGHT, retrieved 2026-09-06. National total: 123.5 million occupied housing units, 41.9% with an attached garage. Standing homes look different from new construction, where our flagship page found the South has risen to an 88 percent garage share since 1971.
By Census division, the gap grows wider
RECS also reports smaller Census divisions, a finer split than the four regions above.
| Census division | Attached garage share |
|---|---|
| Mountain South | 54.8% |
| Mountain North | 52.2% |
| West North Central | 48.9% |
| Pacific | 46.2% |
| West South Central | 45% |
| East North Central | 44% |
| South Atlantic | 40.2% |
| East South Central | 34.9% |
| Middle Atlantic | 31.8% |
| New England | 30% |
HyreGarage computation from EIA RECS 2020 public microdata, division field DIVISION, retrieved 2026-09-06. Mountain South (Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico) leads at 54.8%. New England trails at 30.0%.
Among houses alone, 61.3 percent have a garage
Every figure above answers “what share of all occupied homes has an attached garage.” That puts mobile homes and apartments in the count as a zero, because RECS never asks them.
Count only single-family houses, detached and attached, and the share rises to 61.3 percent: 51.8 million of 84.5 million.
Detached houses run 62.5 percent. Attached single-family houses (townhomes, duplexes and row houses that share a wall) run lower, at 48.3 percent. That fits the lot shape: a shared wall usually means a narrow side yard, or none, for a driveway and door.
HyreGarage analysis: neither number is more “correct.” They answer different questions. For “what share of American homes have a garage,” the honest answer is 41.9 percent.
For “what share of American houses have a garage,” leaving out the roughly 31.6 percent that are mobile homes or apartments, it is 61.3 percent.
A source that gives one number without saying which question it answers has made that choice for you.
Most garages have room for two cars
Garage size, from the RECS 2020 SIZEOFGARAGE question, shown two ways: as a share of homes with a garage, and as a share of every occupied home in the country.
| Garage size | Share of garaged homes | Share of ALL occupied housing units |
|---|---|---|
| One-car | 21.8% | 9.1% |
| Two-car | 66% | 27.7% |
| Three-or-more-car | 12.2% | 5.1% |
HyreGarage computation from EIA RECS 2020 public microdata, variable SIZEOFGARAGE, limited to homes where PRKGPLC1 = 1, retrieved 2026-09-06. Two-car is by far the most common size: 66.0% of homes with a garage and 27.7% of ALL occupied US homes.
Owners are five times as likely as renters to have one
Whether the home is owned or rented (RECS 2020 KOWNRENT), set against whether it has an attached garage.
| Tenure | Occupied units | With attached garage | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Own | 82.9M | 47.0M | 56.7% |
| Rent | 39.4M | 4.4M | 11.2% |
HyreGarage computation from EIA RECS 2020 public microdata, retrieved 2026-09-06. Part of the gap comes from the mix of homes: rentals lean toward apartments, which are never asked the garage question.
Part is real: the gap does not fully close among single-family rentals, though the public RECS file is too small to split that out reliably.
Newer homes are far more likely to have a garage
Attached garage share by the decade the home was built, from RECS 2020 YEARMADERANGE. It counts homes standing today, so read it alongside the new-construction table on our flagship page, not instead of it.
| Built | Attached garage share |
|---|---|
| Before 1950 | 15% |
| 1950s | 38.7% |
| 1960s | 39.8% |
| 1970s | 40.9% |
| 1980s | 41.9% |
| 1990s | 55% |
| 2000s | 59.5% |
| 2010-2015 | 52.6% * |
| 2016-2020 | 56% * |
* Smaller RECS sample in this group. The RECS 2020 public file does not publish a margin of error for each group, so we flag it rather than hide it.
HyreGarage computation from EIA RECS 2020, retrieved 2026-09-06. Homes built before 1950 sit at 15.0%. Homes built in the 2000s reach 59.5%, about four times higher.
How can you check this number yourself?
Every figure here is arithmetic on a public file. Here is the exact path, so you can check the number instead of trusting it.
recs2020_public_v7.csv from EIA’s website. No sign-up, no key, about 56 megabytes. It has one row per surveyed household and several hundred columns.
PRKGPLC1 (attached garage: 1 yes, 0 no, –2 not applicable), SIZEOFGARAGE, TYPEHUQ (home type), REGIONC, DIVISION, KOWNRENT, YEARMADERANGE and NWEIGHT (the sample weight). The codebook shows PRKGPLC1 is “Not applicable” for TYPEHUQ 1 (mobile home), 4 (apartment, 2–4 units) and 5 (apartment, 5+ units).
RECS is a sample of 18,496 households standing for 123.5 million. Add up NWEIGHT for rows where PRKGPLC1 equals 1. Divide by the sum of NWEIGHT for every row. That gives the weighted national share: 41.9 percent. Counting raw rows gives a different, wrong number.
For the regional table, group by REGIONC first, then take the weighted share within each group. The same method produces the division, size, owner/renter and build-era tables above.
The weighted sum of NWEIGHT across every row should come to 123,529,025. That is EIA’s own estimate of occupied US homes in 2020. If your total is very different, a filter was applied somewhere before the sum.
Terms used on this page
- RECS
- EIA’s Residential Energy Consumption Survey, run about every four to five years on occupied main homes. It measures home energy use. It asks about garages because an attached garage changes a house’s heating and cooling load.
- PRKGPLC1
- The RECS question on whether a home has an attached garage. Coded 1 (yes), 0 (no) or –2 (not applicable, for mobile homes and apartments). The source of every percentage on this page.
- NWEIGHT
- The RECS sample weight. Multiply each household’s answer by its NWEIGHT and add them up to get a national estimate. We used it for every figure here, not raw survey counts.
- Stock vs. flow
- A stock is what exists at one point in time (this page). A flow is what was added over a period (our flagship page’s new-construction series). Subtracting or averaging one against the other gives a meaningless number.
- AHS Table Creator
- The interactive web tool the Census Bureau uses to publish 2023 American Housing Survey results. We confirmed that the summary-tables page returns an app shell, not a static file.
Why this number matters when you price a door
The share of homes with garages is a research figure, not a sales pitch. But the number has a practical use. It is the base behind every other figure this site publishes about garage doors. Get it wrong in either direction and everything built on it is off.
Say you assume about 90 percent of homes have a garage, which is roughly the new-construction rate today. You would overstate the market for door replacement, service and opener installation by more than double.
Understate it, and every per-household estimate on this site is built on too small a base. That includes the daily door-cycle model and the garage size versus vehicle size comparison.
HyreGarage analysis: the size mix matters as much as the headline share. Two-car garages make up 66.0 percent of homes with a garage. That is why a two-car door, commonly 16 feet wide (sometimes two single doors side by side), is the main product the industry sizes around.
One-car garages, at 21.8 percent, are common enough that a single-door replacement is a routine job. Three-or-more-car garages, at 12.2 percent, are the minority, and they tend to carry a custom or commercial-grade spec.
None of this changes what you should do: measure your own opening rather than assume a national average fits your house. It does explain why makers stock some widths as standard and special-order others.
It also explains why a company that has not seen your garage cannot give you an accurate number over the phone. Our garage door cost calculator starts from your door size for that reason.
What we could not find, and so did not write
Detached garages and carports. RECS asks about attached garages only. We found no federal, downloadable source for how many standing homes have a detached garage or a carport. (For new construction, the Survey of Construction does track carports.)
If you see a national detached-garage percentage, ask which survey it came from. We could not find one.
A current 2026 figure. RECS 2020 is the newest public release. About six more years of new homes, built at a 90-plus percent garage rate per our flagship page, have been added since.
The true 2026 share is very likely a little above 41.9 percent. We have not estimated by how much, because that would need a demolition and replacement rate we have no source for.
Margins of error for each group. The RECS 2020 public file does not include them. EIA publishes replicate weights for that in a separate file, which we did not process. Read the smaller build-era groups (2010–2015, 2016–2020) as a reliable direction, not precise to a tenth of a point.
A stock-level AHS number. We are confident the American Housing Survey collects this; its own Definitions document says so. But we could not pull a published, citable figure from a static file.
Anyone who works the AHS Table Creator by hand could check it against these RECS figures. We would expect them to be close, since both are large federal household samples of the same homes.
Questions
What percentage of American homes have a garage?
Which US region has the most homes with garages?
Does this figure include detached garages and carports?
Why is there no official government number for this?
What source did HyreGarage use instead?
How does this compare with the share of NEW homes built with a garage?
Are renters less likely to have a garage than owners?
What share of homes have a two-car garage?
Is this number still accurate today?
Why use an energy survey to answer a garage question?
Why not just use the American Housing Survey?
Written and audited by
HyreGarage Research Desk
Primary-source research, data analysis and fact checking
We are not a garage door company. We read the agency file, the code record, the standards document or the public register ourselves, compute the figure from it, and publish it with the source and the date we retrieved it.
Where a number cannot be traced to a primary source, we publish the shorter page and say what we could not verify. Our own company records cover ten states; nothing national is ever derived from them.
- 10
- states our own company records cover — and the limit of any claim made from them
- 3,901
- garage door companies in the store
- 457
- license records verified against a state board
- 0
- national claims made from a ten-state store
How this desk works
- Primary sources only. Injury counts come from CPSC. Housing counts come from the Census file, not from a summary of it. Code history comes from the building commission that adopted the code. We do not cite an article that cites a source; we retrieve the source and do the arithmetic ourselves.
- Every figure carries its retrieval date. Registers change, datasets are revised and codes are amended. A number without the date it was read cannot be checked, so every study states one.
- Fact, calculation and analysis are labeled apart. A quote is a quote, a HyreGarage computation says so, and an interpretation says “HyreGarage analysis”. Presenting our reading of a dataset as something the agency stated would be the easiest way to lose the only thing this desk is for.
- Limitations go above the fold. If a figure is an upper bound, a bracket, or an association rather than a cause, that is said before the figure is quoted rather than in a footnote underneath it.
- No DIY instructions for spring, cable or track work. Those components hold enough stored energy to cause serious injury, and CPSC records the consequences. We describe what has failed and what a competent repair involves; we do not tell you how to do it.
Data as of EIA 2020 Residential Energy Consumption Survey microdata, retrieved 2026-09-06. Authorship on this site is organizational: the analysis belongs to the desk rather than to a named individual, and we do not publish credentials we do not hold. Our editorial policy sets out how we source, date and correct what we publish.
Sources & retrieval dates
Have a garage and need work done on it?
Whatever share of the country has one, your door and opener still need real numbers before you sign anything. Get the make, model and scope in writing.
HyreGarage is not a garage door company and does not perform, supervise or warrant garage door work. This page reports federal survey data. It is not a property assessment and makes no claim about any individual home.