Ownership drops for lower-income groups
The housing market has come a long way from the Great Recession, but the recovery has left some groups behind.
A Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau and mortgage loan data indicates that the decline in homeownership — from its peak of 69 percent in 2004 to 63.5 percent of households that own their own homes as of the third quarter of this year — has been sharpest among young adults, blacks and lowerincome households.
For households headed by an adult younger than 35, the percentage owning a home was down 18 percent between 2004 and 2016, according to the Pew Research report; for black households, the drop was 16 percent. By contrast, the percentage decrease for non-Hispanic white households was 5 percent over the same time period. For all groups combined, homeownership fell by 8 percent, according to the report.
Although foreclosures have receded since the housing downturn, Pew Research reports that the reason homeownership rates across the board keep trending downward is because fewer households are able to make the leap from renting to homeownership.
With tightened lending restrictions, a lack of housing inventory in many markets and surging home prices, renters, especially those who have lower in- comes, are finding it harder to save up for a down payment and buy a home.