Did Most Sears Homeowners Build Their Own Houses?

In the age of the social media, “facts” often get repeated without anyone checking the original source.  Sears homes are no exception. Over the next few posts, I’m revisiting some of the most commonly repeated claims.

Did most Sears homeowners build their own houses?
Online, you'll often see statements like:

• “Roughly half of the buyers assembled the homes themselves.” 
• “About half of the people who ordered Sears homes put them together themselves.”

But what do the actual numbers say? Since Sears destroyed its Modern Homes records, the only hard data we have comes from Sears’ own advertising — and those ads tell a very different story. Sears regularly published totals of "Honor Bilt" homes and how many were owner‑built:

• A display ad from May 1926 said that as of that date, 34,000 Honor Bilt homes were built, and of these, 23,800 were constructed by the owners. That is 70%.

• A display ad from October 1926 said that as of that date, 37,000 Honor Bilt homes were built, and of these, 24,500 were constructed by the owners. That is 66%.

• A display ad from June 1927 said that as of that date, 37,500 Honor Bilt homes were built, and of these, 24,500 were constructed by the owners. That is 65%.

• A display ad from April 1928 said that as of that date, 41,200 Honor Bilt homes were built, and of these, 29,300 were constructed by the owners. That is 71%.
  
  
• A display ad from the Spring 1929 Sears, Roebuck catalog said that as of that time, 44,200 "Honor Bilt" homes were built, and of these, 33,500 were constructed by the owners. That is 76%.

Ad from the Chicago Tribune, Oct 31, 1926.

Across these ads, the percentage of owner‑built homes consistently falls around 65–76%.

Would Sears have a reason to inflate the number of homeowner-built homes in the advertising copy? There’s no clear incentive. When these ads were run in the late 1920s, Sears openly encouraged both approaches: homeowners could build the house themselves, or Sears would refer them to a local contractor. Sears profited either way.  In its catalogs, Sears also encouraged contractors to build their homes on a speculative basis.

What's the takeaway?

Based on Sears’ own published figures, we can estimate that the majority (roughly 70%) of Sears houses were built by the homeowners themselves. The remainder were constructed by contractors hired by homeowners or speculative builders.