Census Survey: Household Growth Finally Booming

Dan McCue notices a notable trend apparent in the recently released Census Bureau 2014 Q4 Housing Vacancy Survey (HVS): "the surprise here was that HVS data show household growth going through the roof in the fourth quarter of 2014, with year-over-year growth in excess of 1.6 million households." 

Adds McCue: "This comes after household growth had long been stalled out, averaging less than 600,000 per quarter for much of the previous five years."

McCue notes that such an abrupt change is worth some skepticism, but that the Census verified that there were no structural or methodological changes to the dataset. Also, "even averaged over the previous four quarters, Q4 still pulls the annual household growth reading for 2014 up significantly, to 789,000, representing a significant increase from the 524,000 annual growth reported for 2013…"

So, caveats aside, the news that households might be growing again is big news for the housing market and the country's economy in general: "Amidst this lack of clarity is a widely held anticipation, or possibly hope, that household growth, having been 'pent-up' after such a long period of weakness, is primed to rebound strongly and this Q4 number from HVS might signal an inflection point."

For an additional takeaway from the HVS (and one that's more in line with the trends of the past few years), Rachel Bogardus Drew explains the continuing trend of declining homeownership.