While home ownership rates move up and down from time to time, they have consistently fallen under the past 5 years. Basically as people lose their jobs, they lose their homes too.
But demographic changes are having a big impact too. Single people tend to rent and married couples tend to own. With young adults pushing marriage off to later in life, they tend to rent longer.
What is bad for homeowners is good for landlords.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-04-29/u-s-homeownership-rate-falls-to-the-lowest-since-1995.html
But demographic changes are having a big impact too. Single people tend to rent and married couples tend to own. With young adults pushing marriage off to later in life, they tend to rent longer.
What is bad for homeowners is good for landlords.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-04-29/u-s-homeownership-rate-falls-to-the-lowest-since-1995.html
The homeownership rate in the U.S. declined to the lowest in almost 19 years as rising property prices and mortgage rates held back demand.
The share of Americans who own their homes was 64.8 percent in the first quarter . . . the lowest since the second quarter of 1995 . . .
Recovering home prices and mortgage rates that have climbed from near-record lows last May have put real estate out of reach for some would-be buyers. . .
“The homeownership rate is held back by slow job growth, tight mortgage credit and declining affordability,” . . .
Sam Zell, chairman of apartment landlord Equity Residential (EQR), said yesterday that the rate will fall to as low as 55 percent because more Americans are choosing to rent as they postpone getting married . . .
“The deferral of marriage has such a staggering impact on real estate and I just don’t think people focus on it,” Zell, 72, said at the Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills, California. “I don’t think the multifamily market has ever had a better set of future demographics.”
The U.S. homeownership rate for all Americans peaked at 69.2 percent in June 2004, according to the Census Bureau.
. . . blacks had the lowest homeownership rate at 43.3 percent, up from 43.2 percent in the previous three months. The rate for whites decreased to 72.9 percent from 73.4 percent in the fourth quarter.