Fams get owned

A MERICAN families today are increasingly renting homes instead of buying them.

The number of families with children under the age of 18 who also own their own homes decreased from 25.7 million to 22.1 million between 2006 and 2016 — a 14 percent drop — according to US Census Bureau estimates. Meanwhile, the number of families with children living in rentals increased from 12.4 million to 14.3 million, a 16 percent increase.

Apartment-rental site RentCafé analyzed the trend, breaking it down by city, and made the following observations in a report out earlier this month.

1The

highest increases in renting families happened in cities in the South: Charlotte, Atlanta, Phoenix, Houston and Miami.

2The smallest changes were in the Pittsburgh, Los Angeles-Long Beach- Anaheim and New York metropolitan areas.

3In

New York specifically, the number of renter families jumped by 79,000 (or 8 percent), while the number of owner families decreased by 176,000 (or 13 percent). In the last five years, single-family home prices increased by 38 percent, while rents actually notched a 3 percent drop.

4Nationwide, singlefamily home prices grew 75 percent faster than rents over the past five years.

5Demand

for larger units is growing. Data from apartment intelligence provider Yardi Matrix shoes that 52 percent of the new apartments built between 2006 and 2016 across the country are family-sized (two-bedrooms or larger). In New York, 42 percent of the apartments built in that 10-year span are two-, three- or four-bedrooms.