With the migration of a large number of rural population to cities and towns，the problem of rural spare homestead has become increasingly prominent.Based on 306 village level data and 3833 farmer data in 10 provinces（cities） in China in 2020 obtained from the “Rural Revitalization database（CRRS）” of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences，a statistical analysis was conducted on the occupation status of rural homesteads and the willingness and mode of farmers’ active use of spare homesteads.It was found that the current proportion of rural spare homesteads was close to 8%，and only 31.91% of farmers were willing to transfer the right to use homesteads.The use of homestead is a complex reform process involving the participation of multiple subjects，and the wishes of farmers should be fully respected.However，at present，the transfer and trading market of China’s homesteads which scatter throughout the village has not been formed and the cost-benefit distribution of the reform is uneven.As a result，farmers，rural collectives and local governments face some obvious obstacles in the active use of spare homestead.The superposition of multiple factors leads to the weak willingness of farmers to make use of idle homestead sites.Therefore，in order to better endow farmers with property rights and improve the utilization efficiency of homestead，on the one hand，we need to speed up the improvement of top-level system design and attach importance to the reform of the interest distribution mechanism of the participants.On the other hand，it is necessary to innovate the specific ways to realize the revitalization and utilization，not only to solve the problem of the sporadic distribution of spare homesteads which are difficult to be used in a centralized way，but also to remove the system and mechanism barriers such as the access difficulty for external entities and market failure.