The U.S. Post Office has been attempting to reduce or eliminate sidewalk and curbside delivery to single-family homes, and the new construction market is feeling the affects, the National Association of Home Builders reports on its Eye on Housing blog. In a new NAHB survey, 64 percent of single-family builders say they’ve had a local post office require a “cluster mailbox” on one of their developments; 36 percent say they have not encountered that yet.
The Post Office is showing a preference for delivering mail to a centralized or “cluster” group of mailboxes, as opposed to taking mail to an individual mailbox in front of each home. The increase in cluster mailboxes has been split across the country. Builders report the highest number of cluster mailbox requirements in the Western regions of the U.S. Ninety-five percent of builders in the West reported encountering a cluster mailbox requirement, compared to 59 percent in the Northeast and Midwest, and 54 percent in the South.
Source: “Over Three-Fifths of Builders Have Encountered Cluster Mail Boxes,” National Association of Home Builders’ Eye on Housing blog (June 6, 2018)
