Where are the Sears Houses - August 2017 Edition

3 Oak St - Beacon, NY
Sears Lakecrest

Wow, that was quick! It was just over a month ago that the national database of Sears Modern Homes passed the 7,500 home mark. In less than 6 weeks, the list of homes has grown by over 500 homes, passing 8,000. As the members of our group of kit house researchers like to see how they're doing in their respective states, we are revisiting the breakdown of location of houses by state and comparing that to our previous update in June 2017. Let's take a look!

As of this date, Sears houses have been located in 44 states, the District of Columbia and the Provinces of Alberta and Ontario, Canada.

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

1. Ohio (1600+ homes): Ohio is once again on top with over 1,600 homes. As was the case in June, Ohio accounts for at least 20% of the houses on the list.

2. Illinois (1500+ homes): Illinois is just shy of 1,600 homes and is closing in fast on Ohio. Will Illinois overtake Ohio at the next update? We'll have to wait and see!

3. New York (1000+ homes): New York surged past the 1000 home mark and Pennsylvania in the state rankings. I'll take some credit for that as research I was doing in and around Albany, New York turned up a lot of Sears homes. But I know the researchers working on homes in Pennsylvania are still finding houses every week.

4. Pennsylvania (900+ homes): Pennsylvania may have slipped a spot but it still passed the 900 home mark. I would not be surprised if it clears 1000 homes by the next update.

5. Michigan (800+ homes): Activity in Michigan was pretty slow as it continues to hover just above 800 homes.

6. Indiana (275+): Indiana is just one house ahead of Maryland. I fully expect it to pass 300 homes by the next update.

7. Maryland (275+): Maryland is also just a handful of homes away from 300. I'm sure it will clear that threshold by the next update. Unfortunately, we also lost a couple of authenticated Sears houses to demolition in Silver Spring, Maryland, which is why Indiana moved past it on the list.

8.  Washington DC (276): DC slipped into 8th places as only 1 new home has been identified since the last update. That's not unexpected as we believe that most of the Sears houses in DC have already been identified.

9. Wisconsin (175+): Wisconsin is closing in on 200 homes.

10. New Jersey (150+): New Jersey rounds out the top 10. I believe there's a lot more Sears houses to be found in New Jersey.

11. Kentucky (150+): A lot of new discoveries in Northern Kentucky helped push the Bluegrass State ahead of Virginia.

12. Virginia (100+): Virginia is a few houses shy of reaching 150 homes.

Currently, there are 12 states where at least 100 Sears houses have been located in the state. As was true at the last update, the top 10 states collectively represent over 90% of the total number of Sears houses found to date.

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.