Half of America's Homes Are Old Enough to Be Failing. 86% of the People Living in Them Are Sleeping Fine
New Groundworks survey finds confidence outpacing reality, as foundation repair demand surges more than 20% in the first five months of 2026
Most Americans don’t know how to evaluate the structural condition of the most expensive thing they own – and a growing number are finding out the hard way. Groundworks’ own field data shows foundation repair demand has surged more than 20% in just the first five months of 2026. Yet a new national survey commissioned by Groundworks finds that 86% of homeowners believe their home is structurally sound and 82% feel in full control of its long-term safety. More than a third can't verify either of those things — and most haven't tried.
That confidence is running headlong into a hard reality: the American home is aging. Nearly half of all U.S. homes were built before 1980, according to First American Data & Analytics covering roughly 161 million homes. Groundworks experts note that homes of this era are the ones where foundation problems most often begin to surface, as decades of soil movement, moisture cycles, and settling take their toll. An estimated 38.4 million homes built between the 1970s and 1990s are now entering their 40-year structural service window — the age at which the need for structural attention historically accelerates. America's housing stock is older than ever, and most homeowners have little sense of what that means for the place they live.
