Where are the Sears Houses - March 2018 Edition

123 Lampeter Rd - Lancaster, PA
Sears Somers
Image courtesy of Zillow

It's been just over three months since the last update of "Where are the Sears Houses?" While many of us experienced an extended winter this year, that didn't keep our intrepid band of Sears kit house researchers from finding houses. The winter weather provided a good excuse to hunker down and do a deep dive into resources like mortgages records to find more - and in some cases, rare! - examples of Sears houses. Recently, the national database of Sears houses passed the 9,500 house mark which means it's time for another update of "Where are the Sears Houses?" Here is the breakdown of location of houses by state based on approximately 9,500 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 some of the previous updates had 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 (2000+ homes): Ohio leads the way again with over 2,000 homes. A number of the houses added since the last update were discovered through researching mortgage records, boosting the total number of authenticated houses on the list. Ohio accounts for over 20% of the houses on the list.

2. Illinois (1800+ homes): Illinois continues to hold onto second place on the list. While almost 100 new homes were found in Illinois, it was outpaced by the 200+ homes found in Ohio. 

3. Pennsylvania (1300+ homes): Pennsylvania continues to yield lots of houses with almost 150 new homes added since the last update. 

4. New York (1100+ homes): New York continues to stand in fourth place but only a few dozen new homes were added since December. 

5. Michigan (800+ homes): Michigan added a few new homes and continues to maintain fifth place. 

6. Indiana (300+): Indiana continues to inch its way toward 400 homes.  

7. Maryland (300+): Maryland added a few more homes to stay in front of Washington DC. 

8. Washington DC (300+): Washington DC added 20 new homes, which was a pleasant surprise. These new homes came after a review of building permits uncovered a number of homes that hadn't been previously identified. These additions pushed Washington DC over the 300 count. 

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

10. Wisconsin (175+): Wisconsin is just a few houses short of 200. Perhaps it will make it to that mark by the next update. 

11. Virginia (150+): Virginia continues to lead Kentucky but for this update, it's by a single house! 

12. Kentucky (150+): Kentucky closed the gap on Virginia as both inch their way towards 175 houses. 

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 almost 94%. 

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.