National List
Our database of Sears houses In the U.S.
We maintain the National Database of Sears Houses In the U.S.
About a decade ago, one of our researchers asked the question, "Where's the list?"... and from that question, our research task was born. Here's her blog post from 2015, telling that story.
An important point to remember: There is no existing list from Sears records, of house kits that they sold. All of those records were disposed of by Sears. Our list is a compilation of all Sears houses that we have located ourselves, or that we've learned of from owners or other sources. There are certainly many more out there to be found, but we can't possibly know how many Sears houses still remain standing, because we can't know for certain how many were built, or, at this point, how many of those, have been demolished. We know that Sears advertised having sold something like 70,000 to 100,000, but the exact number is unverified.
Do we share our national database? We largely keep our database private, for the use of our research team, but will certainly answer questions from homeowners, historical societies, press, or the general public, about specific information we have collected.
Where are the Sears houses in the U.S.?
Our list is ever growing, but research team member Andrew Mutch periodically crunches numbers, and provides interesting blog posts about our data, on his blog, Kit House Hunters. Here is a selection of some of the data-related blog posts he has written:
Where are the Sears Houses? February 2023 Edition (look for updates, periodically, in new blog posts)
Making Lists - January 2023 (about our various kit-house lists--updated every January)
Sears Most Popular-April 2018 Edition (This post was written about 4,000 homes ago, so the exact numbers are now out of date, but this gives an idea of many of the very popular Sears models on our list.)
Revisiting the History of the Final Years of Sears Roebuck's Modern Homes Program
Another member of our research team, Lara Solonickne, showcases Sears houses in the greater Chicago area, on her blog, Sears Homes of Chicagoland. But, she also periodically writes up data-and-research-based articles about Sears' Modern Homes program:
