More Americans became homeowners in
the summer months, fresh evidence of a housing market that’s finding some
stability after several rocky years.
The national homeownership rate was
64.4% in the third quarter, the Census Bureau said Tuesday.
That’s a half-percentage point higher than a year ago.
After touching an all-time high of
69.1% in 2004 as the housing bubble inflated, the homeownership rate bottomed
out at 62.9% in 2016 as waves of Americans lost their homes or sold under
duress. At the same time, many Americans who would ordinarily become buyers
were locked out of the market by stringent lending rules, a lack of affordable
inventory and a challenging economic backdrop.
All that has made the post-crisis
housing market not just less accessible, but less dynamic. It’s possible the
moderation in home prices over the course of 2018, which some analysts believe
came from would-be buyers pushing back against hefty price gains, helped many
of them finally become owners.
The homeownership rate can be
controversial. Some analysts believe that government policies that helped
enable ownership more broadly were responsible for the housing crisis, although
many others believe there’s blame to go around.
Still, the meager recovery to this
point puts the homeownership rate only back to 1995 levels, well before the
run-up to the bubble. That suggests it may be possible for many more Americans
to become owners, if housing market conditions ease further. The vacancy rate
for owners was just 1.5% for the second month in a row, tighter than the 1.6%
it averaged throughout 2017.
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