The housing market in the Southeastern United States, Orlando and Atlanta, are shifting in a huge way. According to the annual State of the Nation’s Housing report from Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, Millennials are increasing going from owning a single family house to renters in multifamily units.
“Perhaps the most telling indicator of the state of the nation’s housing is the drop in the home ownership rate,” says Chris Herbert, managing director of the Joint Center for Housing Studies. “This erases nearly all of the increase from the previous two decades. In fact, the number of homeowners fell for the eighth straight year, and the trend does not appear to be abating.”
Key facts to the State of the Nation’s Housing report
The national homeownership rate slid for the 10th consecutive year in 2014 to 64.5 percent, and continued to fall in early 2015 with a first-quarter reading of just 63.7 percent—the lowest quarterly rate since early 1993.
The share of US households that rent their housing rose to a 20-year high of 35.5 percent in 2014, marking the 10th consecutive year of robust renter household growth.
Renter household growth has averaged 770,000 annually since 2004.
While soaring demand is often attributed to the millennials’ preference to rent, households aged 45–64 in fact accounted for about twice the share of renter growth in 2004–2014 than households under the age of 35.
Although making up just 25 percent of renters in 2014, households aged 55 and over contributed fully 42 percent of renter household growth over the preceding decade.
The national rental vacancy rate dipped to 7.6 percent in 2014, its lowest point in nearly 20 years.
Rents rose at a 3.2 percent rate last year—twice the pace of overall inflation.
Multifamily starts rose steadily to nearly 360,000 units in 2014—more than in any year in the 1990s and 2000s.
More than 90 percent of multifamily units started last year were intended for the rental market, up from less than 60 percent in the mid-2000s.
New multifamily units are primarily built for the high end of the market, with a median asking rent equaling $1,290 in 2013, or about half of the typical renter’s monthly household income.
The outlook for rental housing is strong
Rental growth is likely to remain strong as members of the huge millennial population enter the housing market. According to the latest JCHS projections, individuals that are currently under age 30 will form over 20 million new households between 2015 and 2025, and most of these households will be renters.
There will also be a large increase in renters over age 65 as more members of the large baby boom generation cross this threshold over the coming decade.
“While affordability for moderate income renters is hitting some cities and regions harder than others, an acute shortage of affordable housing for lowest-income renters is being felt everywhere,” says Herbert. “Between the record level of rent burdens and the plunging homeownership rate, there is a pressing need to prioritize the nation’s housing challenges in policy debates over the coming year if the country is to make progress toward the national goal of secure, decent, and affordable housing for all.”