August 24, 2015

2015 State of the Nation’s Housing Report

Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies recently released its 2015 State of the Nation’s Housing report.  The Center summarizes its findings by noting that the nation’s:

housing recovery lost momentum in 2014 as homeownership rates continued to fall, single-family construction remained near historic lows, and existing home sales cooled . . . [but] the rental market remained a bright spot, fueled by strong growth in renter households. With rents rising and incomes well below pre-recession levels, though, the number of housing cost-burdened renters set another record, far surpassing public efforts to provide affordable housing.

Among other statistics, the Center reports that:
  • the national homeownership rate has fallen back to 1993 levels, and “generation X took most of the hit from the housing bust;”
  • there has been very high demand for rental units and it’s not just because of millennials — households aged 45–64 account for about twice the share of renter growth compared to households under the age of 35; and
  • mortgage delinquency rates have fallen by half since the peak of the foreclosure crisis, but loans that are seriously delinquent are concentrated in relatively few neighborhoods, which have disproportionately large shares of minority and low-income residents.
Source: the Center’s 2015 report