Renters On The Rise
My takeaways:
- Rents should be under intense pressure over the next few years.
- Growth of U.S. households since this blog began = about 8 million!
- The affluent are winning.
Hat tip to Kerry for sending this in!
Ten years after the U.S. housing market crashed, some things have gotten worse instead of better.
More U.S. households are headed by renters than at any point since at least 1965, according to new analysis of Census Bureau data by the Pew Research Center, a nonprofit think tank in Washington, D.C. “The total number of households in the United States grew by 7.6 million between 2006 and 2016,” it found. “But over the same period, the number of households headed by owners remained relatively flat, in part because of the lingering effects of the housing crisis.” And the rise in renters is significant, even accounting for the growth in the population over the last half-century.
The number of households owning their home has fallen since the peak of the U.S. property bubble in 2006, Pew found, while the percentage of households renting rose to nearly 37% last year from just over 31% in 2006. The 2016 rate is slightly less than the 37% in 1965. “Certain demographic groups — such as young adults, nonwhites and the lesser educated — have historically been more likely to rent than others,” Pew found. “However, rental rates have also increased among some groups that have traditionally been less likely to rent, including whites and middle-aged adults.”
Adults younger than 35 continue to be the most likely of all age groups to rent. In 2016, 65% of all households headed by people younger than 35 were renting, up from 57% a decade earlier. Last year, 41% of households headed by someone aged 35 to 44 were renting, up from 31% of all households in 2006. Rental households headed by someone aged 45 to 64 rose to 22% of all households in 2006 from 28% in 2016. But among baby boomers and the oldest Americans — those 65 or older — the rental rate remained steady at around 20%.
One reason so many people are renting: Only 45% of renters on average can afford the payments on a median-priced home in their area, according to a report on the state of housing from Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies released last June. Buying a house is even more out of reach for renters in expensive markets such as the West Coast, the Northeast and Florida. In these parts of the country, as few as 10% of renters could afford the mortgage payments if they bought a home, the report found. Economists recommend spending no more than 30% of gross income on housing.
