Boulder’s houses have more toilets than people

In case you were wondering, now you know: Boulder residents never have to stand in line behind their family members to use the bathroom. Miami residents, meanwhile, have a lot longer to wait.

That’s the takeaway from a new analysis from real estate brokerage Redfin, which has calculated the number of residential toilets per capita in the largest US metro areas. The below chart shows the top and bottom five, as well as the average from 37 metro areas studied. Boulder has 102 toilets per 100 people — in other words, more toilets than people.

It’s amusing (and, as you’ll see in Redfin’s blog post on the study, it’s prime pun material), but it also tells a bit about who lives in which US cities, as well as our housing tastes. For example, as one Redfin agent says in the post, the many condos in Miami were built for older people wanting to downsize. But many of those condos were also built in the 1960s and 70s … today, buyers are increasingly interested in new condos with more bathrooms. Meanwhile, wealthy DC is known for having some of the largest homes in the nation.

Indeed, Americans are increasingly getting more and more luxurious houses, as I wrote in May. The median square footage of a new single-family home grew by 54 percent from 1973 to 2013.

Correction. The first chart in an earlier version of this post said it listed the number of toilets per capita, not per 100 people. Clearly that was wrong — 102 toilets for every 1 Boulder resident would be way too many.