The current homeownership rate has fallen to where it was two decades ago. The demand for home buying from traditional buyers is simply not there. Recent surveys find that the majority of Millennials would rather rent than buy. This is the group that will need to pick up the slack moving forward should the housing market return to any normal environment. But what is truly normal at this point? Over the last decade we have added 10 million renter households while actually losing 1 million owner occupied properties. The recent buying spree of 2013 and 2014 came in the form of investor demand. Real estate has become simply another speculative silo for Wall Street to speculate on. And many buy it up. Across the nation, home prices with current interest rates seem reasonable with the median priced home running close to $200,000. So why is the trend still pushing towards more people renting? Is this simply a nationwide trend or is this also impacting high cost states?
The growth of rental nation
People are hardwired to look forward. History is for nostalgia and past financial events are for economics classes.