The number of single-family houses in Nebraska by the year they were
built, from 1800 to 2026, compiled from parcel records. It's already
counted, one row per year, so give houses to the weight argument of
sonify_histogram().
Format
A tibble with 182 rows and 2 columns:
- year_built
The year the house was built.
- houses
How many single-family houses were built that year.
Source
Compiled by Matt Waite from Nebraska parcel records. See
data-raw/ne_house_years.R in the package source.
Details
A few things to know before you listen:
Round-number years. Before 1950, 42% of houses have a year ending in 0, where you'd expect about 10%, and 58% end in 0 or 5. 1900 alone has 19,205 houses, compared with 730 in 1901. From 1980 on the pattern mostly disappears. Why old houses pile up on round numbers isn't documented yet. With one bin per year, you can hear it.
Recent years are incomplete. 2025 (408 houses) and 2026 (1) were only partly recorded when the data was compiled, so they're far lower than the years before them. That's not a housing crash.
Missing years. 45 of the years between 1800 and 2026 have no houses and no row.
Unknown years. About 13,000 parcels have no build year recorded. They aren't included.
Examples
ne_house_years
#> # A tibble: 182 × 2
#> year_built houses
#> <int> <int>
#> 1 1800 4
#> 2 1820 1
#> 3 1821 1
#> 4 1840 2
#> 5 1848 1
#> 6 1849 2
#> 7 1850 10
#> 8 1851 1
#> 9 1853 1
#> 10 1854 3
#> # ℹ 172 more rows
# One bin per decade
ne_house_years |>
sonify_histogram(year_built, weight = houses, binwidth = 10, instrument = "marimba")
21 notes · 20.0 seconds · marimba