Home Burglary Statistics in the US (2026 Report)

U.S. home burglary has fallen by nearly two-thirds since 2005, and 2024 set a modern-era low. The FBI counted 779,542 burglaries that year, an 8.6% drop from 2023. Homes made up about 52% of them. More break-ins happen in daylight than after dark, the opposite of what most people assume.

The FBI recorded 779,542 burglaries in 2024. Property crime overall fell 8.1% from the year before; burglary alone dropped 8.6%.

Burglary is the smallest of the FBI's three property-crime categories. Larceny-theft is by far the largest, at about 72% of all property crime in 2024, followed by motor vehicle theft. Burglary is also the category that has fallen fastest since 2005, down about 64%.

Today's rate is about a third of what it was in 2005. The drop has been consistent across two decades.

The 2024 figures line up across sources. The FBI's August 2025 summary and the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) Crime Known to Law Enforcement report both put the national rate at 229 to 230 per 100,000. The decline holds; it's not a reporting artifact.

New Mexico's burglary rate is more than 10 times New Hampshire's. The difference between the highest and lowest state is wider than for almost any other property crime category.

Alaska, Arizona, Hawaii, Mississippi and Pennsylvania are omitted because their 2024 data was incomplete or below BJS's reporting thresholds.

New Mexico has held the top spot for four years running. The five highest-rate states in 2024 (New Mexico, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Washington and Nevada) were the same five that led in 2023, with only Oklahoma and Washington swapping third and fourth place.

Home security marketing focuses on nighttime break-ins. The FBI data doesn't back that up.

Residential burglaries by time of day, 2024:

• Daytime: 216,601 (53%)
• Nighttime: 174,053 (43%)
• Unknown: ~15,000 (4%)
  

Total residence burglaries: 405,776.

Burglars want an empty house. Homes are most vacant during the day, when residents are at work or school.

Front doors are the most common way in.

About 55% of 2024 burglaries involved forcible entry. Another 38% were unlawful entries with no force, which usually means a door left open or a window left cracked. Those required no tools, only an unlocked door.

The FBI's Table 24 tracks the value of stolen and recovered property. The 2024 total across all theft categories, including burglary, was about $23 billion.

Average loss per residential burglary, 2024:

• Daytime: $4,986
• Nighttime: $4,368

Cash, jewelry, small electronics and firearms show the lowest recovery rates. Vehicles recover more often because they carry a VIN. Jewelry has no equivalent identifier.

Juveniles under 18 made up about 8% of burglary arrests in 2024, down from roughly 21% a decade earlier, per FBI arrest data.

The gender and age breakdown has been more stable: males accounted for about 79% of arrests where the offender's sex was known, and most fell among adults in their 20s and 30s.

BJS's 2024 National Crime Victimization Survey put the household burglary/trespass rate at 13.1 victimizations per 1,000 households, effectively unchanged from 2023 and 2020. Urban households, renter-occupied homes and lower-income households reported higher victimization rates than the national average.

Only 13% to 15% of reported burglaries were cleared by police in 2024. That is the lowest clearance rate of any major FBI property or violent crime category except motor vehicle theft.

Stolen property rarely comes back through police recovery. For most homeowners, insurance is how losses get replaced. Policy sub-limits, deductibles and claim history determine how much of a loss the policy actually covers.

A burglary claim moves through a homeowners policy the same way any theft claim does. A standard homeowners policy covers theft of personal property, subject to the deductible and to sub-limits on categories like jewelry, firearms, cash and business property.

Three aspects of that process routinely catch homeowners off guard:

1. The sub-limits: A standard policy usually caps jewelry theft at $1,500 to $2,500 and cash at $200 to $500. If a burglar takes an engagement ring, most of the loss falls outside the policy without a scheduled personal property endorsement.
2. The deductible: If losses come in near the deductible, filing may cost more in future premium than the payout is worth.
3. The claim on the record: A burglary claim shows up on the CLUE report and can raise rates at renewal, especially with other recent claims on file. Multiple claims can lead to non-renewal in some states.

A monitored security system is one of the more consistently useful discounts on a homeowners policy, usually 5% to 15% off the premium, depending on the insurer. On the average U.S. home policy of about $3,548 a year, that comes to roughly $177 to $532 against the monthly monitoring fee.

Before filing, homeowners should compare the estimated loss against the deductible and recent claim history. If the loss is close to the deductible, the premium hit at renewal may exceed the payout.