When Sears Sold Houses

From 1908 until the early 1940s, Sears sold complete house kits by mail. Customers picked from hundreds of designs, and Sears shipped everything needed to build the home, right down to nails, paint, and precut, numbered lumber, to the local train station. Roughly 30,000 parts arrived with a detailed instruction manual, and Sears claimed about half of these homes were built by the owners themselves rather than hired carpenters. The company left out plumbing, heating, and electrical wiring as add-ons, mainly because many areas didn't yet have electric or municipal water service, not to cut costs.

The program fell apart with the Great Depression. Sears had been financing many of these homes with loose mortgage terms, and when buyers defaulted after the 1929 crash, Sears ended up foreclosing on thousands of houses, a move that badly damaged its reputation. The company stopped offering mortgages in 1933 and shut down the kit-home program entirely by the early 1940s. Cheaper post-war tract housing, built on-site by production crews rather than by homeowners, eventually replaced the appeal of kit homes altogether.

An estimated 18,000 to 22,000 Sears kit houses are still standing today. If your house was built in the early 20th century, it is worth knowing that these homes often used solid, durable materials, especially the higher-end "Honor Bilt" line, which used tighter framing spacing and rot-resistant wood. Sites like searshouses.com list models and offer ways to check whether a house matches an original Sears design.