American consumers are blessed with an extraordinary range of choices for almost every product imaginable from cars to clothes to breakfast cereal. Yet when it comes to housing, the choices are often far narrower.
The 2026 National Association of REALTORS® Community and Transportation Preference Survey reveals strong demand for more housing options: 59% of respondents preferred a home with a smaller yard in a walkable neighborhood over a home with a larger yard that required more driving, while 63% said they would pay more to live within an easy walk of parks, shops and restaurants.
That preference runs counter to a development pattern that for decades has steered Americans toward single-family homes on large lots in car-dependent neighborhoods. Today, many are willing to trade space for walkability and for the convenience, connection and lighter transportation burden that can bring.
Designed to gauge preferences linked to smart growth principles, NAR’s triennial survey of 2,000 adults in the nation’s 50 largest metropolitan areas asks people to weigh neighborhood form, transportation choices, access to destinations and different types of housing.
The main takeaway is not to replace one model of development with another, but to widen the selection. Some households will continue to favor larger homes, private yards and driving. Others will prize the ability to walk to a store, park or restaurant.
“The most important signal that comes out of that is we need a variety of housing,” said Will Doerlich, a REALTOR® based in San Ramon, Calif., who chairs NAR’s Smart Growth Advisory Board. “One size doesn’t fit all. We need to pay attention to that.”
Walkability is a Leading Priority
Walkability is a clear priority based on the survey results. Among respondents, 89% said sidewalks and places to walk are important when deciding where to live and 82% placed importance on being within an easy walk of shops and parks. Another 74% valued having a place to walk or exercise a pet.
Together, those responses show that walking is not merely a leisure activity. It helps people judge whether a neighborhood can support daily life.
At the same time, the survey highlights the obstacles that keep many people from walking more often. Seventy-one percent said the places they need to go are too far away to reach on foot. Weather was identified as an obstacle by 41%, while 39% cited dangers from traffic.
Those barriers underscore an important distinction: residents may value walking, but their ability to walk depends on land-use patterns, street design and the location of homes relative to services.
Majority Supports More Housing Options
That is why expanding housing choice is essential. Neighborhoods dominated by single-family homes on large lots push housing away from shops, restaurants and services and generate too little foot traffic to support such amenities.
The survey results reinforce that link between housing variety and walkability as 63% of respondents said small-lot, single-family homes would be a good fit for their communities while 51% supported townhomes, duplexes and other attached housing options.
“That’s a really important [finding] for developers to be aware of and it’s also extremely important for policymakers as we’re trying to address the housing supply and affordability crisis across the country,” said Katharine Burgess, vice president of programs and operations at Smart Growth America.
The spread-out development pattern that has prevailed since World War II also limits transportation choices. Without enough homes and riders within easy reach, public transit becomes difficult to sustain.
“The more compact that a neighborhood pattern might be, the more viable the transit that can support that neighborhood might be,” said Mallory Baches, president of the Congress for the New Urbanism. “If you only have single-family houses, your transit system is going to be pretty reduced in its viability.”
Rediscovering the Missing Middle
Three-quarters of the residentially zoned land in major U.S. cities is designated exclusively for single-family homes to preserve the scale and character of neighborhoods. Missing middle housing offers a way to add more homes without sacrificing scale and character.
Townhomes, duplexes, accessory dwelling units (ADUs) and small-lot detached houses can fill the gap between large-lot single-family homes and dense apartment buildings. Together, these options can meet the needs of people across a wider range of life stages, household sizes and incomes.
Yet housing choices alone do not create a walkable community. A neighborhood also needs a beating heart — a vibrant gathering place that draws people together and puts the rhythms of daily life within easy reach.
“To me, the most important component is the neighborhood main street,” said Daniel Parolek, founding principal of the urban design and architecture firm Opticos Design and originator of the term missing middle. “It’s being able to walk to the coffee shop, bagel shop, bike shop, maybe even a dentist or small grocery store. This main street is missing from a lot of attempts at walkable communities.”
Although the term missing middle may be relatively new, the development pattern itself is deeply rooted in the way many American communities were traditionally built before it was squeezed out by exclusionary zoning practices.
“It’s back to the future, right?” Doerlich said. “We used to build towns and cities like this.”
The Value of Walkability
The willingness to pay for walkability makes the survey’s findings directly relevant to the real estate market. The 63% who said they would pay more for easy access to parks, shops and restaurants suggest that location and neighborhood design matter to many respondents.
Likewise, the 59% who preferred a home with a smaller yard in a walkable area to a home with a larger yard that required more driving indicate that lot size is only one component of value. Time, convenience and access also shape housing decisions.
When daily destinations are scattered, households pay in both time and money. People who cannot drive face even narrower options. Communities that place more homes near shops, services and transit can ease those burdens while nurturing social connection and physical activity.
Those benefits also carry a clear market signal: strong demand, coupled with the limited supply of walkable housing, creates an opportunity for developers ready to build the missing middle.
“These projects have little or no competition in the market,” Parolek said. “I don’t know what could be better for a developer than to not have any competition in the market. The builders that have been doing it have been doing really well.”
A Role for Local Government
But developers can capitalize on that unmet demand only where local policies allow a broader range of homes and support walkability. “I was really excited to see that [many] of the respondents believed that government has a role to bring housing to vibrant, well-connected locations,” Burgess said.
Forty-six percent of survey respondents said local governments should make it a high priority to enable communities where people do not have to drive long distances to work or shop while 39% assigned that goal a middle priority. Only 15% considered it a low priority.
“Zoning has been one of the biggest constraints on development by limiting density, by separating uses and by really making it difficult to build the types of housing and mixed-use developments which often form the historic cores of many of our cities,” Burgess said.
The next step is clear: dismantle the regulatory barriers that lock in car-dependent development and choke off walkable neighborhoods.
“Every city and county should give walkable neighborhoods a level playing field. Just make them legal and let the market and development community determine what they want to deliver,” Parolek said. “We’re still fighting the same battles in terms of street design and mixed-use and densities … as we were 20 or 30 years ago.”
Removing barriers to missing middle housing would do more than add homes. It would help cultivate the connected places residents associate with a better quality of life. That is reflected in the survey’s findings: 46% of residents in highly walkable neighborhoods reported being very satisfied with their quality of life versus just 25% in areas where walkability is absent.
“There’s a much more heightened awareness of how community is supportive of our well-being,” Baches said. “That finding is really important. It underscores the idea that places that are designed for people help people live better lives.”
Demand Grows as Households Change
The 2026 survey makes it clear that walkability and housing choice are mainstream preferences. They command broad market and civic support — and the demand is rising. Since 2020, the share of respondents who prefer homes with small yards in walkable neighborhoods has risen 7 percentage points, from 52% to 59%.
Changing work patterns, demographics and household sizes are driving the need for more housing choices. The housing stock built for an earlier era no longer fits the way many people live today.
Remote and hybrid work keep more daily activity close to home. An aging population needs options for aging in place in their existing neighborhood, and high prices are pushing younger buyers to seek smaller, more attainable homes. At the same time, the rise of one-person households strengthens the case for housing that offers less space, lower costs and greater connection to the surrounding community.
Ultimately, the survey’s message is about choice. Americans are not asking every neighborhood to look alike. They are asking for more chances to live near daily destinations in homes that fit their budgets, households and stages of life.
