Roseville, Calif. – If they can afford to, Americans still want to own homes. That is the finding of a report released by the Harvard University Joint Center for Housing Studies.
Student debt, rising rents and the fallout from the nearly decade-old housing bust have restrained people’s ability to buy, even though the dream remains alive.
The Harvard report sees reasons for both optimism and concern The growing number of households forming as millennials are leaving the comfort of their parents homes is one of the optimistic elements of the report and the concern is the rising cost being faced by current renters as they work towards buying a house.
Those factors could determine whether the share of Americans who are renting keeps rising or whether the nation’s home ownership rate can rebound from a near 48-year low of 63.5 percent.
