Buyers purchasing a residence are overwhelmingly choosing single-family detached homes, just as they always have.
The NAR’s Economists’ Outlook blog noted that 83 percent of homes purchased in 2015 were single-family detached homes, significantly higher than the shares of townhomes (seven percent), condos (three percent), and other styles of homes (seven percent) bought last year.
The Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers has data ranging back to 1981, and every edition shows that single-family homes comprise the largest share of the market, by far. Consistently, 74 to 88 percent of homebuyers purchased single-family homes each year. Shares for condos and townhouses hover around 10 percent each.