{
  "slug": "home-burglary-us",
  "question": "What are the odds of your home being burglarized?",
  "quick_answer": "There is no reliable lifetime figure here: the available sources either bundle burglary with motor-vehicle theft and other household theft, or give police-reported counts that undercount unreported incidents, so none isolates the per-household burglary rate a lifetime probability would require. About a third of US adults say they worry about being burglarized, even as measured rates have fallen for three decades.\n",
  "category": "crime",
  "tags": [
    "household"
  ],
  "no_reliable_estimate": true,
  "perceived": {
    "description": "Gallup's annual crime-worry poll consistently places home burglary in the middle of the list. In the October 2025 wave, 34% of US adults said they worry frequently or occasionally about having their home burglarized — below identity theft (69%) and car theft (39%), but above being mugged (29%) or murdered (22%). The worry level is broadly stable year-over-year even as measured burglary rates have fallen sharply for three decades.\n",
    "rough_estimate": "About a third of US adults say they worry about being burglarized",
    "kind": "poll",
    "survey_source": {
      "title": "Crime in U.S. Seen as Less Serious for Second Straight Year",
      "publisher": "Gallup",
      "url": "https://news.gallup.com/poll/697124/crime-seen-less-serious-second-straight-year.aspx",
      "year": 2025
    }
  },
  "sources": [
    {
      "url": "https://bjs.ojp.gov/press-release/criminal-victimization-2023",
      "title": "Criminal Victimization, 2023",
      "publisher": "US Bureau of Justice Statistics",
      "source_type": "govt_report",
      "statistic": "Property victimization rate of 102.2 per 1,000 households in 2023 (includes burglary/trespassing, motor vehicle theft, and other household theft; the press release does not break out the burglary component)",
      "excerpt": "\"In 2023, the rate of property victimization was 102.2 per 1,000 households, which was not significantly different from 2022. Property victimization includes burglary or trespassing, motor vehicle theft, and other types of household theft.\"\n",
      "source_date": "2024-09-12",
      "source_accessed": "2026-04-11",
      "archive_url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20260413172429/https://bjs.ojp.gov/press-release/criminal-victimization-2023",
      "calculation_notes": "BJS NCVS Criminal Victimization 2023 reports total property victimization at 102.2 per 1,000 households, a figure that bundles burglary/trespassing with motor-vehicle theft and other household theft. This press release does not report the burglary component on its own, so it cannot ground a burglary-specific per-household rate or a lifetime probability. The NCVS captures both reported and unreported victimizations via household interviews, making it the most complete US household victimization measure, but the burglary subrate needed here lives in detailed data tables not reached among these cited sources.\n",
      "independence_note": "BJS NCVS is a household survey conducted independently of the FBI UCR/NIBRS law-enforcement reporting system. The two count burglaries through entirely different pipelines — victim recall vs police reports — and the NCVS typically yields higher counts because it captures unreported incidents.\n"
    },
    {
      "url": "https://www.safehome.org/resources/burglary-statistics/",
      "title": "The Latest Burglary Statistics: How Common is Burglary in the U.S.?",
      "publisher": "SafeHome.org (citing FBI UCR/NIBRS)",
      "source_type": "reputable_reference",
      "statistic": "852,963 reported burglaries in 2023 at a rate of 253.3 per 100,000; national burglary rate dropped 69% between 2005 and 2024",
      "excerpt": "\"This represents a 9.5% decrease in the burglary rate from 2023 (253.3 per 100,000). The national burglary rate dropped 69% between 2005 and 2024. The data shows that total burglaries dropped by 64 percent between 2005 and 2024, from over 2.1 million incidents to fewer than 780,000.\"\n",
      "source_date": "2025-10-01",
      "source_accessed": "2026-04-11",
      "archive_url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20260413172502/https://www.safehome.org/resources/burglary-statistics/",
      "calculation_notes": "FBI UCR/NIBRS reports 852,963 burglaries in 2023 at 253.3 per 100,000 population. This is a police-reported count and is lower than a household-survey measure would be, because FBI data only counts incidents reported to police and only a minority of household burglaries are reported to authorities. The figure is per-population rather than per-household, so it establishes that reported burglary is common and steeply declining (down 69% from 2005 to 2024) but does not by itself yield a per-household annual or lifetime probability.\n",
      "independence_note": "FBI UCR/NIBRS collects incident data from law enforcement agencies, while BJS NCVS surveys households directly. The two systems are methodologically independent and undercount in opposite directions.\n"
    },
    {
      "url": "https://news.gallup.com/poll/697124/crime-seen-less-serious-second-straight-year.aspx",
      "title": "Crime in U.S. Seen as Less Serious for Second Straight Year",
      "publisher": "Gallup",
      "source_type": "reputable_reference",
      "statistic": "34% of US adults worry frequently or occasionally about having their home burglarized (October 2025)",
      "excerpt": "\"Fewer Americans say they worry about crimes, such as having a car stolen (39%) or their home burglarized (34%), being a victim of a hate crime (30%), or getting mugged (29%), attacked while driving (27%), murdered (22%) or sexually assaulted (21%).\"\n",
      "source_date": "2025-10-30",
      "source_accessed": "2026-04-11",
      "archive_url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20260413172538/https://news.gallup.com/poll/697124/crime-seen-less-serious-second-straight-year.aspx",
      "calculation_notes": "Used for the perceived-risk side only. The 34% figure is the fraction of respondents reporting frequent-or-occasional worry, not an elicited probability. It places home burglary in the middle tier of Gallup's crime-worry hierarchy.\n",
      "independence_note": "Gallup telephone survey data, entirely separate from both BJS NCVS household victimization sampling and FBI UCR police-report aggregation. Measures public worry, not incidence — included only for the perceived-risk axis and not for any probability estimate.\n"
    }
  ],
  "comparison_anchors": [
    {
      "label": "Being murdered (lifetime, US adult average)",
      "lifetime_us_adult": 0.00348
    },
    {
      "label": "Identity theft (lifetime, US adult)",
      "lifetime_us_adult": 0.6
    },
    {
      "label": "Death in a car crash (lifetime, US)",
      "lifetime_us_adult": 0.0108
    }
  ],
  "short_label": "Home burglary",
  "outcome_severity": "moderate_harm",
  "exposure_pattern": "recurring",
  "outcome_type": "property",
  "valence": "negative",
  "caveats": "This is not a death risk; it concerns whether a US household experiences a burglary or unlawful trespass. No single lifetime probability is published here because the reachable cited sources do not report a burglary-specific per-household rate — the BJS NCVS press release gives only the aggregate property-victimization rate (102.2 per 1,000 households in 2023, which also includes vehicle theft and other household theft), and the FBI count is police-reported and per-population. The NCVS definition of \"burglary or trespassing\" is also broader than the common mental image of a break-in while away: it includes unlawful entries where nothing is stolen and trespassing incidents that may involve no forced entry. The FBI's narrower UCR definition yields a lower count (852,963 reported burglaries in 2023), both because of the definitional gap and because only a minority of household burglaries are reported to police. Any lifetime figure would be highly sensitive to the assumed annual rate and to the multi-decade declining trend — the reported burglary rate fell 69% between 2005 and 2024 — so someone turning 18 today faces a lower per-year risk than adults did in earlier decades. Geography and income are the largest sources of heterogeneity: county-level burglary rates span more than an order of magnitude.\n",
  "quality_score": {
    "d1": 5,
    "d2": 5,
    "d3": 5,
    "d4": 5,
    "d5": 5,
    "d6": 4,
    "d7": 4,
    "d8": 5,
    "avg": 4.75,
    "scored_by": "claude-code-8d",
    "scored_at": "2026-05-25",
    "methodology_version": "1.2"
  },
  "reviewer": "likelier-seed",
  "last_reviewed": "2026-04-11",
  "reviewed": true,
  "generated_at": "2026-04-11",
  "image": {
    "alt": "A single house key resting on a pale surface, flat vector illustration in muted tones."
  },
  "attribution": "Likelier — https://likelier.app",
  "license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
  "support": "https://buymeacoffee.com/kgluszczyk?via=likelier&utm_content=api-fear-single",
  "canonical_url": "https://likelier.app/home-burglary-us"
}