Only about 53% of U.S. adults own homes, far below the commonly cited 65% homeownership rate, according to new Federal Reserve research that paints a starker picture of access to homeownership.
(PSA: Never trust the state's statistics.)
New Fed research suggests far fewer Americans own homes than widely believed
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-homeownership-rate-minneapolis-fed-study/
18 Comments
Broadfern@lemmy.world · 48 pts · 31d
Now let’s get numbers for USians under 50, and USians who make under the median income. 53% is still too high.
Cowards.
billwashere@lemmy.world · 19 pts · 30d
This is anecdotal and with a few caveats: In my area, and people I work with (which are generally good jobs) I’d say of those 40 and up it’s something like 75%. Of the other 25% that are living in apts or rental houses, I’d say 10% is due to choice. So maybe 15% want to own an home but can’t. One other thing to note is in this area, Raleigh area and suburbs, home prices are reasonable, especially when you get out a little. Now the home I just purchased almost 4 years ago has almost doubled in price in the last 10-15 years or so. So if I had purchased the same house I’m in, in 2010 or so, I would have spent almost half as much money. No my salary hasn’t doubled in 16 years so there’s that.
Under 40, the story is way different. Probably more like 25% own homes. Shit is just way too expensive. And again my experience is with people making decent salaries in IT and academia. There is no way in hell someone 25 work two retail jobs could even touch the down payment, let alone the mortgage without 6 other roommates. Case in point, my son’s rent on a 1 bedroom apt is 2x what my first mortgage was on a 4 bedroom in 2001.
booly@sh.itjust.works · 7 pts · 30d
It's worth reading the underlying paper, here.
Figure 3 has an interactive chart showing both stats (the traditional measure and the new metric under discussion), and visually shows the spread, by age, across all age groups. (If you're on a phone you can pull the chart up full screen to be able to see y axis lines.)
Some of the discussion around there is interesting, too:
Figure 6 gives state by state data and shows the actual spread between the two metrics for each state, so you can see big state differences, too.
Hakuso@scribe.disroot.org · 16 pts · 30d
Because Blackstone owns them all, now.
grte@lemmy.ca · 15 pts · 30d
For any Canadians reading, this almost certainly applies to us as well as we determine the home ownership rate in the same flawed way. It misses all sorts of living situations such as adult children living with parents, people renting a room, people renting non-legal suites in a house where the other half is occupied by the owner, etc.
khepri@lemmy.world · 11 pts · 30d
Yeah and the people who do "own" homes own like 30% of it and the bank owns the rest on average I'd bet. I feel like home ownership should be defined as actually owning the home, not having a contract with a bank where if you miss a couple payments they'll be taking it back thank you very much. Do you really "own" something if it can be legally taken from you for non-payment? No, that's what we call leasing-to-own, not owning, but nobody seems to want to think of housing that way, because then like 5% of people would truly "own" their homes lol.
altphoto@lemmy.today · 7 pts · 29d
Own=is in fucking debt forever until death over nothing because the bank will eventually repocess it.
ramble81@lemmy.zip · 6 pts · 30d
The ratio of home ownership probably looks closer to the distribution of the demographics of congress than that of America.
bloogoose@lemmy.zip · 5 pts · 30d
silver@lemmy.zip · 5 pts · 30d
Who owns the rest of the houses?
billwashere@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 30d
Corporations
SacralPlexus@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 30d
And who owns corporations?
The ultra-rich. They are buying everything up because that’s what you do when you have millions or billions of surplus money that grows with compound interest. You “invest” it by buying assets. Stock in corporations, real estate, assets. They are financial black holes sucking everything in because we don’t have any societal mechanism to stop the exponential growth.
Tax wealth, not work.
NatakuNox@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 30d
53% is a lie as well. It's closer to 30%.
MrOtingocni@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 29d
Every single house for sale in my part of town is selling for TRIPLE the price it sold for 6 years ago. Interestingly almost all of them were sold, by different people, around 5 to 7 years prior.
dregan@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 30d
Yeah, now factor in what percentage of those homes are actually owned by the bank.
incogtino@lemmy.zip · 3 pts · 29d
Current: Homes with resident owner
New: People who own their home
Homes can't own people, so only the new measure can reasonably be called 'home ownership'
LodeMike@lemmy.today · 2 pts · 29d
The first statistic only works if there's zero difference between what kind of households live in rented houses and purchased houses.
booly@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 30d
The commonly reported statistic asks, what percentage of adults live in homes owned by a resident, rather than rent? That's been steady in the mid-60 percentages for decades.
This new paper from the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis offers another statistic for consideration: the ratio of homeowners to the adult population.
The main categories of people who differ in this proposed methodology:
Most importantly, these are unevenly distributed by geographical region, age, other demographics. Not all of these are bad (nothing wrong with multi-generation living arrangements), but they can show trends across time or place, and pick up less noticeable trends in people's living situations more broadly.
ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.net · -1 pts · 30d
Why do they have to research this? Just ask people.