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Nationally, homeownership was trending upwards as the housing bubble inflated. Then the bubble popped and homeownership rates dropped. Now they’re lower than they were in 1994. But states were affected very differently. Click the map at left to see how homeownership changed in any state.
It appears that, at the national level, it was women who were making larger gains in terms of their homeownership rates through the ‘90s and ‘00s. But, perhaps as a result, when the bubble popped, women were also the ones who felt it most acutely. See how the story varies by state by clicking the map at left.
Through the ‘90s, while homeownership was rising overall, it was actually displacing renting. But in the early ‘00s, rental rates starting rising as well, if not as fast as homeownership rates. When the bubble popped, rental rates skyrocketed as people lost their houses and moved to more affordable rentals.
At least nationally, there doesn’t seem to be a hugely disparate racial component to the housing bubble. White households, as you’d expect since they are much wealthier on average, are far likelier to be homeowners than minority households. But all races’ homeownership rates experienced some amount of rise leading up to 2008 and fall after, at least nationally.
Here the story gets really interesting. Americans with a high school diploma or less have seen their homeownership rate drop consistently over the last 20 years, while those with an Associate’s Degree or higher have increased theirs consistently. The bubble exacerbated these differences, but they’ve been there all along.
The number of people in households has remained remarkably consistent over the last 20 years. The changes have been gradual, but the trend has been 1- and 2-person households growing slowly at the expense of 3-, 4- and 5-person households. The pattern varies significantly by state.
