The Census Bureau reported that the homeownership rate dropped to 63.4 percent in the second quarter of 2015.
“This level represents a nearly 50 year low, and continues the trend of declining homeownership that has been in effect since the end of the mid-2000s housing boom,” writes Rachel Bogardus Drew, a post-doctoral fellow at The Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies.
The flipside of lower homeownership rates is the higher share of households renting their homes. According to the study, rental housing is more in demand than it has been for decades.
New construction of rental units has picked up as a response, but most of the demand is served by conversions of existing units from owner- to renter-occupied within the single-family housing stock.
