The American Housing Survey (AHS, formerly Annual Housing Survey) can answer many of your questions about U.S. people and homes.

The AHS is the largest, regular national housing sample survey in the United States. The U.S. Census Bureau conducts the AHS to obtain up-to-date housing statistics for the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). An introductory booklet created by Census Bureau provides an overview of housing data and tells you where to find these data. You can download the PDF version from:
http://www.census.gov/prod/2004pubs/ahsr04-1.pdf

The AHS contains a wealth of information that can be used by professionals in nearly every field for planning, decisionmaking, market research, or various kinds of program development. It gives you data on apartments, single-family homes, mobile homes, vacant homes, family composition, income, housing and neighborhood quality, housing costs, equipment, fuels, size of housing unit, and recent movers. National data are collected every other year, from a fixed sample of about 50,000 homes, plus new construction each year. The survey started in 1973, and has had the same sample since 1985, letting you see homes and households changing over the years. In some metropolitan areas we have additional samples every 4-6 years, to measure local conditions.

• AHS 2009 Seattle Data
• AHS 2009 New Orleans Data
• 2009 AHS National Data
• 2007 AHS National Data
• 2007 AHS Metro Data
• 2005 AHS National Data
• 2004 AHS Metro Data
• 2003 AHS National Data
• 2002 AHS Metro Data
• 2001 AHS National Data
• 1999 AHS National Data
• 1998 AHS Metro Data
• 1997 AHS National Data
• More AHS Data and Publications
• Order AHS Data Online
• Housing Affordability Data System (HADS)
• Join the AHS Electronic Mailing List
• Streamlining the American Housing Survey