The Rise of the Renter Household

Since the early 2000s, home rental trends in the U.S. have shifted in step with broader economic trends. Whether the Great Recession or the COVID-19 pandemic housing boom, disruptive economic events have changed how Americans approach housing, making the transition from renting to owning less certain and often less attainable. 

While the early 2000s centered on widespread homeownership, recent years are increasingly being defined by long-term renting.

To assess how these trends have changed overtime, online renting platform Point2Homes analyzed rentership data nationwide from 2000 through 2024. The analysis found that in 2000, 66% of households in the U.S. owned their homes, but that figure peaked in 2006 at 67.3% and has since declined slightly to about 65.5% in 2024, the most recent data available.

Meanwhile, the rental market has continued to expand. Overall, the share of renter households has increased from 33.8% in 2000 to just under 35% in 2024, an increase of 10.5 million renter households in that time period. In other words, there were 35.6 million renter-occupied households in 2000, compared with more than 46.1 million as of 2024.

While the uptick in renters might appear modest at first, it represents millions of additional households choosing or being pushed into renting, often due to rising home prices, high mortgage rates, and limited housing supply.

And, although homeownership has been gaining ground, too (from 69.8 million to 86.6 million during the same 25 years), renter households grew faster, jumping 29.3%, compared to a 24% increase among owners. In fact, renting is becoming the more common housing option in some markets — especially in those where affordability and flexibility outweigh the appeal of ownership, from renter-dominated suburbs to long-established urban renter hubs.