Eye On Housing
The Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) provides detailed information on the finances of U.S. families, including income, net worth, balance sheet components, credit use, and other financial outcomes. A previous analysis indicated that the primary residence continued to be the largest asset category on the balance sheets of households in 2019 and it accounted for about one quarter of all… Read More ›
The topic of diversity, and its relationship to homeownership and home building, carries significant implications for policy making, social justice, and equity. In addition to the usual regional classification, NAHB’s Q4 2020 Home Building Geography Index (HBGI) provides a segmentation of the housing market based on county-level measurements of racial and ethnic heterogeneity. For this purpose, we use ESRI’s1 2018… Read More ›
The 2019 Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) showed improvements in economic well-being for many across income and wealth distributions over 2016 to 2019. The homeownership rate increased from a low of 63.7% in 2016 to 64.9% in 2019. Moreover, the primary residence continued to be the largest asset on the balance sheets of households in 2019 (Figure 1), accounting for about… Read More ›
As with most things in 2020, consumer credit’s trajectory of growth was upended by the COVID-19-induced economic recession. Revolving credit, of which credit card debt is a major component, shrank by 11.2% over the year, while nonrevolving credit increased 3.9%, thus producing an overall growth rate of 0.0%. In December, consumer credit increased at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of… Read More ›
The Census Bureau’s Housing Vacancy Survey (CPS/HVS) reported the U.S. homeownership rate declined to 67.4% in the third quarter of 2020, from 67.9% in the prior quarter. The elevated homeownership rates are line with increases in both existing and new home sales in the second quarter. The national rental vacancy rate increased, while the homeowner vacancy rate remained unchanged. However,… Read More ›
The Federal Reserve Board recently released its Report on the Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households. The report provided results from the responses to the 2019 Survey of Household Economics and Decisionmaking (SHED), as well as from responses to a follow-up survey conducted in April 2020. Surveyed items included income, employment, dealing with expenses, banking and credit, housing, education, and retirement…. Read More ›
The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage rate has been known to follow, albeit loosely, the 10-year Treasury yield. The latter is a widely tracked economic indicator and serves not only as a sign for the pulse of the U.S. economy, but also as a premium for pricing myriad financial instruments, upon which characteristics specific to the financial instrument are added. Throughout the… Read More ›
Data released by the Census Bureau’s Housing Vacancies and Homeownership survey (CPS/HVS) show that the minority homeownership rate increased to 49.3 percent in the first quarter of 2020, up 2.2 percentage points from the first quarter of 2019 (Figure 1). This is the highest it has been since the first quarter of 2010 (49.5 percent). The year-over-year gain in the… Read More ›
The minority homeownership rate increased to 48.6 percent in the fourth quarter of 2019, up 0.8 percentage points from the fourth quarter of 2018, according to a new data release from the Census Bureau’s Housing Vacancies and Homeownership survey (CPS/HVS) (Figure 1). This is the highest it has been since the third quarter of 2011 (48.9 percent). This year-over-year gain… Read More ›
According to the Census Bureau’s Housing Vacancy Survey (HVS), the U.S. homeownership rate increased to 65.1% in the fourth quarter of 2019. This is 0.5 percentage points higher than the previous quarter reading of 64.8% and the highest the rate has been since the last quarter of 2013. Even so, the homeownership rate remains well below the 25-year average rate… Read More ›