EXCLUSIVE: Americans Want Walkable Neighborhoods—but Not Always the Housing That Creates Them

Americans say they want neighborhoods where daily life is close by, new data shows—but the same survey shows weaker support for some of the housing that can make those places possible.

Nearly two-thirds (64%) of respondents said they would pay more to live within walking distance of parks, shops, and restaurants, according to the latest Community and Transportation Preference Survey from the National Association of Realtors®—shared first with Realtor.com®.

And when asked to make a more concrete trade-off, 59% said they would choose a smaller-yard home in a walkable neighborhood over a larger-yard home that requires more driving.

But enthusiasm drops when walkability becomes a question of what gets built nearby. While 63% say small-lot single-family homes would be a good idea in their community, support falls to 51% for townhomes, duplexes, and other attached housing, 44% for rental apartments, and 40% for condos.

“It’s clear that Americans place a high value on making sure the place they call home has the amenities they need to lead a happy and healthy life,” NAR Executive Vice President and Chief Advocacy Officer Shannon McGahn said. “NAR members know this intuitively, but having hard data like this is an asset in our advocacy efforts at the federal, state, and local level.”

That data may be more important than ever as the country tries to close its housing gap. If new development promises the convenience of walkability, it may have to make that trade-off unmistakable: more homes, but also more of daily life within reach.

Walkability is gaining ground, but safety still comes first

The NAR survey, conducted in early May among 2,000 adults in the nation’s 50 largest metro areas, found that 57% of respondents now say sidewalks and places to walk are “very important” when deciding where to live—up 7 percentage points from 2023.

For Carly Majorana, a waterfront-based agent in St. Petersburg, FL, that preference is already showing up in how buyers describe the life they want a home to make possible.

“I tell my clients that they are buying what they want their Tuesdays to look like,” she says. “Whether that be walking to a coffee shop, restaurants, or the nearest marina to hop on their boat. Most of the time it gets them thinking.”

But safety still dominates how Americans evaluate a neighborhood. When respondents were asked to rank community qualities, low crime was the runaway top choice, with 70% ranking it first or second. Walkability ranked second, with 32% putting it first or second.

Interestingly, those priorities may be more connected than they first appear. If low crime reflects whether residents feel safe in their neighborhood, traffic safety helps determine whether they can actually use it on foot—and the survey found that 39% of respondents cite traffic safety as a barrier to walking.

It’s an especially relevant concern in the U.S., too. While sustained street safety efforts have helped reduce road deaths in peer countries around the world, pedestrian deaths in the U.S. rose 70% from 2010 to 2023, according to a Washington Post analysis. Sweden’s Vision Zero approach, by contrast, helped cut pedestrian deaths by 65%, and road deaths across the European Union have fallen 25% since 2011.

Many Americans want to walk—but their neighborhoods make them drive

The survey also points to a gap between how Americans want to move through their communities and how those communities actually function.

A large majority of respondents (85%) said they like walking, but 62% also said they drive because they do not have many other options. The biggest barrier is distance, with 71% of respondents reporting the places they need to go are too far away to walk. Weather, traffic safety, and too few sidewalks followed.

That makes the central barrier to walkability clear: not desire, but design.

A sidewalk can make a neighborhood more pleasant, but it can’t make the grocery store, school, park, or workplace closer on its own. For walkability to become a real housing option, communities need enough homes near enough daily destinations. But that is a rarity in the current housing stock.

“Truly walkable neighborhoods are hard to find,” says Joel Berner, senior economist at Realtor.com. “Just 2.8% of properties nationwide have a pedestrian-friendly score from Local Logic of 8.0/10 or better.”

Local Logic’s pedestrian-friendly score measures how easy it is to complete daily life on foot, based on factors such as proximity to nearby destinations, street connectivity, pedestrian infrastructure, and the overall ease of getting around without a car. A higher score indicates that a property is in a neighborhood where walking is more practical, not just possible.

Scarcity creates a premium

That shortage is visible even in markets where buyers expect walkability.

In Manhattan, Michelle Griffith of Douglas Elliman says walkability is “one of the most frequently requested lifestyle features among Manhattan buyers today,” especially among young professionals, dual-income couples, families with young children, and empty nesters.

But in a city where walkable neighborhoods are already built into the market, inventory remains a pressing constraint.

“The challenge isn't finding walkable neighborhoods in Manhattan; it's finding available inventory within those neighborhoods,” Griffith says.

That scarcity is also changing how homes are marketed. In May 2024, just 0.4% of listing descriptions used the term “walkable,” according to Realtor.com data. A year later, that share had edged up to 0.6%. By May of this year, it had reached 1.0%.

“Walkability is growing as a selling point for homes on the market as the cost of transportation is being considered by prospective homebuyers when they choose where to live,” says Berner. “Given this year's oil shock and the subsequent climb of gasoline prices, walkability is now an especially desirable trait.”

Gas prices are up more than 40% in 2026, after the war in Iran disrupted the global oil market. The rising cost of car ownership is also adding to that pressure. Newcars are almost 30% more expensive than they were in 2020, and the average new-car payment today sits at an all-time high of $770.

Levi Rodgers, CEO of LRG Realty in San Antonio, says the premium for being able to break free of those costs is already visible in his market.

“We see homes in neighborhoods that are walkable sell for probably 15% to 25% more per foot compared to their counterparts that may be located on a cul-de-sac in a suburban community, and not to mention these homes sell with fewer days on market,” he says.

Building walkable communities remains a challenge

It seems that all roads lead back to the housing shortage, now estimated at 4.03 million homes.

“Many of the city's most desirable walkable areas have extremely limited supply, which creates competition and often requires buyers to move quickly when the right property becomes available," Griffith explains. "Demand continues to outpace inventory in many of these locations."

But this is where McGahn’s point about advocacy becomes more complicated. The survey presents robust data to make the case for walkable communities, but it also shows why demand alone won’t build them.

Small-lot single-family homes drew the strongest backing in the survey, suggesting they may be the easiest compromise. But smaller lots alone won’t deliver walkability at scale if zoning still keeps homes separated from shops, schools, parks, child care, transit, and jobs.

That's why planning research has long linked walkability to a broader mix of conditions: residential density, a diversity of land uses, connected street design, access to destinations, and proximity to transit. Delivering that kind of development at the pace needed to close the housing gap will likely hinge on persuading communities to allow that mix—not just more homes, but more homes near the places people need to go.