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by mulmen 600 days ago
Now I’m curious how this happened. This is the portion of homes owned by their residents, not the number of owned homes as a portion of total population. I’m also curious what the income and wealth to home ratios are. Looks like I have a weekend project.
2 comments
kasey_junk 600 days ago
The pre-war/post war duality is easy to understand. The US made it official policy to increase homeownership. The government subsidizes housing for all income levels and there was tons of housing built.

The post-war era has seen only minor changes in homeownership rates. And those tend to be around macro economic events like 2008 and Covid (and the Reagan era mortgage rates woof).

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mulmen 600 days ago
Thanks that’s very interesting. Why was pre-war homeownership low? Did more people rent their homes?
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kasey_junk 600 days ago
Yes. And there was much more variation in the types of housing. Employer provided forms/bunk houses, flop houses, tenements, boarding houses, etc.

Importantly the quality of the housing was in many cases horrendous.

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johnnyanmac 600 days ago
My bet is simple: Boomers are all at retirement age if we use the cap of 1954, they were basically given land during the post-war boom. Many had a lifetime career so there was no need to constantly hustle and move about to get a comfortable life. Home ownership is likely very top heavy for Boomers and older Gen X as a result.

If that's even in the ballpark we're going to see a lot of assets aquired by insurance and hospitals to pay off the final years and this residential ownershio will torpeo.

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kasey_junk 600 days ago
The census bureau has looked at this. The Reagan years hit boomers hard causing their percentage of homeownership to drop compared to a similar age cohort historically. Then 2008 wrecked the young boomers and gen x similarly.

In general terms the oldest cohort has steadily advanced in home ownership (I’d guess due to our welfare for the aged that isn’t needs based and better old age health, not land gifts but who knows). So there is definitely a trend of the oldest age cohort increasing its homeownership % while the other cohorts decrease.

But for the under 35 crowd today, they own their own home at a higher percentage than boomers or gen x did when they were in that cohort.

There is also the consideration that the US is just older than it’s ever been. I’m not a demographer do I have no idea how that plays out.

https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/data/charts/fig07.pdf

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