Working Paper #790
A Renter or Homeowner Nation?
Arthur Acolin · Laurie S. Goodman · Susan M. Wachter
Demographics Housing & Residential Rental United States
This article performs an exercise in which we identify the potential impact of key drivers of homeownership rates on homeownership outcomes by 2050. We take no position on whether these key determinants in fact will come about. Rather we perform an exercise in which we test for their impact. We demonstrate the result of shifts in three key drivers for homeownership forecasts: demographics (projected from the census), credit conditions (reflected in the fast and slow scenarios), and rents and housing cost increases (based on California). Our base case average scenario forecasts a decrease in homeownership to 57.9 percent by 2050, but alternate simulations show that it is possible for the homeownership rate to decline from current levels of around 64 percent to around 50 percent by 2050, 20 percentage points less than at its peak in 2004. Projected declines in homeownership are about equally due to demographic shifts, continuation of recent credit conditions, and potential rent and house price increases over the long term. The current and post WW II normal of two out of three households owning may also be in our future: if credit conditions improve, if (as we move to a majority-minority nation) minorities’ economic endowments move toward replicating those of majority households, and if recent rent growth relative to income stabilizes.