Saturday, July 30, 2011

The Other Side of Peak Homeownership

Homeownership rates are falling in every age group, and they are falling the fastest among 30-to-34-year-olds. This is because young adults are choosing not to buy (or can't afford to buy) as they age through their twenties and into their thirties, lowering the homeownership rate of age groups as they fill them. Between 2004 (the year the homeownership rate peaked) and the second quarter of 2011, the homeownership rate of households headed by 30-to-34-year-olds fell by 7.9 percentage points.

     2011      2004
  2nd qtr    annual   change
Total  65.9  69.0 -3.1
<25  21.9  25.2 -3.3
25-29  34.7  40.2 -5.5
30-34  49.5  57.4 -7.9
35-39  60.5  66.2 -5.7
40-44  66.9  71.9 -5.0
45-49  70.2  76.3 -6.1
50-54  74.3  78.3 -4.0
55-59  76.8  81.2 -4.4
60-64  79.0  82.4 -3.4
65+  80.8  81.1 -0.3

You can see home buying taking place among young adults by comparing the homeownership rate of an age group in 2004 with the rate of the next succeeding age group in 2011. Among the 25-to-29-year-old cohort in 2004, for example, 40.2 percent owned a home. In 2011, when those 25-to-29-year-olds of 2004 were in the 30-to-34 age group, a larger 49.5 percent owned a home. So some young adults are buying, but many fewer than during the housing bubble.

Source: Census Bureau, Housing Vacancy Survey
Posted by Cheryl Russell at 10:06 AM
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1 comment:

Raggs & Riley said...

Your data confirms exactley the trend that Elizabeth Warren has been describing for many years. The 30-40 year old age group is the most financially stressed with all aspects of household budgeting coming together as a "perfect storm" creating extreme hardship and difficulty in simply managing survival. Add a few kids and it only gets worse. That's why our firm created a new approach to home constrution that enables builders nationwide to build new homes having lower price tags, lower utility costs and as a result greater household satisfaction.

10:09 AM

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