It turns out that the United States isn't rapidly becoming a nation of renters after all.
Andrew Van Dam reports: "New data indicate that in 2016, in defiance of myriad prognostications, the decade-long decline in the homeownership rate abruptly reversed. Once-rapid growth in renter households stalled, and the long-stagnant number of owner-led households began rising."
The new data come from the Housing Vacancies and Homeownership survey, via the U.S. Census Bureau.
In specific numbers, "homeownership rates rose from a low of 63 percent in the second quarter of 2016 to 64.6 in the fourth quarter of 2018, adjusted for seasonality," according to Van Dam. "The homeownership rate has regained all the ground it lost since 2014."
After laying out the statistics, Van Dam also digs into possible reasons behind the reversal in homeownership trends, pointing to the millennial generation "finally began to surmount the obstacles that sat between them and homeownership."
Read the full story: It turns out Americans weren’t ready to become a nation of renters. Homeownership is back in.
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