Where are the Sears Houses - December 2017 Edition

1046 W Jackson St - Painesville, OH
Sears Vallonia
Image courtesy of Google Maps

The holidays are almost upon us and as 2017 comes to a close, my fellow kit house researchers have been keeping busy finding Sears houses. The national database of Sears houses passed the 9,000 house mark which means it's time for another update of "Where are the Sears Houses?" It's been about two months since the last update, which has been the pace for the past year with the list growing by about 500 homes every two to three months. Here is the breakdown of location of houses by state based on approximately 9,000 homes in the database. Let's take a look!

As of this date, Sears houses have been located in 42 states, the District of Columbia and the Provinces of Alberta and Ontario, Canada. Please note that the updates had previously stated houses had been found in 44 states. That was in error. The same eight states where no Sears models had been identified in 2016 are where we're still looking to find homes. 

The following is a breakdown of the states that have the largest number of identified Sears homes.

1. Ohio (1800+ homes): Ohio is once again on top with over 1,800 homes. The newest member of our kit house research team is from Ohio and she's been having great success at finding Sears houses in her home state. Ohio accounts for over 20% of the houses on the list.

2. Illinois (1750+ homes): Illinois continues to be a solid second on the list. Less than 100 homes separate the top two states. 

3. Pennsylvania (1200+ homes): The area around Philadelphia has been yielding a treasure trove of homes found through Google Street driving and mortgage research. All those new finds pushed Pennsylvania ahead of New York again and past the 1200 homes mark.

4. New York (1100+ homes): New York is back in 4th place after Pennsylvania surged ahead.

5. Michigan (800+ homes): Michigan continues to hold down 5th place in the list on its way to 900 homes. 

6. Indiana (300+): At the last update, I wondered if Indiana would reach the 400 homes mark. Not yet but it continues to march its way in that direction. 

7. Maryland (300+): Maryland continues to stand near the 300 homes mark. 

8.  Washington DC (281): DC continues to maintain its 8th place status. 

9. New Jersey (200+): New Jersey continues to hold onto ninth place in the list. 

10. Wisconsin (175+): Wisconsin hasn't made it to 200 homes yet but it continues to inch its way to that goal. 

11. Virginia (150+): Virginia continues to lead Kentucky - barely! Just a handful of homes separate the two on the list. 

12. Kentucky (150+): Kentucky continues to keep pace with Virginia but hasn't managed to pass it yet. 

Currently, there are 12 states where at least 100 Sears houses have been located in the state. In previous updates, the top 10 states accounted for over 90% of the total houses located. In this update, that percentage increased to 93%. 

The national database of Sears Modern Homes is the collective work of a number of kit house researchers located across the country. The sources of the information in the database include the personal work of those researchers, the work of other kit house researchers, publicly available resources including newspapers and websites and information provided by home owners and other members of the public with an interest in kit houses.