Large Unit Share
The share of housing units with three or more bedrooms.
The share of housing units in a tract that have three or more bedrooms.
The Census Bureau asks the bedroom count at every housing unit, occupied or vacant. "The number of bedrooms is the count of rooms designed to be used as bedrooms, that is, the number of rooms that would be listed as bedrooms if the house, apartment, or mobile home were on the market for sale or for rent. Included are all rooms intended to be used as bedrooms even if they currently are being used for some other purpose" (ACS Subject Definitions).
The Bureau publishes bedroom counts in categories running from no bedroom through five or more. This measure combines the three-bedroom, four-bedroom, and five-or-more-bedroom categories against the total housing unit count.
The Bureau states that "bedrooms provide the basis for estimating the amount of living and sleeping spaces within a housing unit," and that the data allow officials "to evaluate the adequacy of the housing stock."
Bedroom count is the closest thing the ACS publishes to unit size at tract level. It describes what kind of household the local stock can house, which building-type measures such as single-family share only approximate: large apartments and small detached houses both exist in quantity.
Metrics in this family#
Considerations#
Bedrooms are counted by design, not by use. A room intended as a bedroom counts even if it is currently an office or a store room, and a one-room unit is classified as having no bedroom by definition regardless of its floor area. The measure therefore tracks how the stock was laid out rather than how it is occupied today.
Bedroom count is not floor area. A three-bedroom unit in one market may be considerably larger or smaller than a three-bedroom unit in another, and the ACS publishes no square footage.
The denominator is all housing units, including vacant ones, so a tract with a large seasonal or off-market stock is described by the whole inventory rather than only the part in use.
Estimates are 5-year averages. Tracts made up largely of group quarters have few conventional housing units and are not given a share, and in tracts with few housing units the estimate carries a wide margin of error.
Census tract boundaries were redrawn for the 2020 census. Estimates published on earlier boundaries are carried onto current ones before use — see geography.
References#
- 1ACS Subject Definitionshttps://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/acs/tech_docs/subject_definitions/2024_ACSSubjectDefinitions.pdf