WASHINGTON POST: Fewer people own their homes and the trend is expected to continue.
WASHINGTON POST: Fewer people own their homes and the trend is expected to continue.
For a lot of reasons, though, this trend is not temporary. It won’t reverse when the housing collapse fades from memory, nor as the economy picks back up. In fact, according to a new projection from the Urban Institute, homeownership in America likely will keep falling until 2030. It will fall for the young and the middle-aged, for blacks and for whites. By 2030, Urban predicts, the U.S. homeownership rate will be as low as 61.3 percent — a number we haven’t seen in half a century.
Viewed another way: A big surge in renters is coming. And this trend has major implications for the kind of housing we should be building, as well as all of the housing we’ve already built. Between 2010 and 2030, according to the report, a majority of the estimated 22 million new households that will form in America will be renter households.
