By Balazs Szekely | Rent Cafe Blog
Key takeaways
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The population of almost a quarter of the 100 largest US cities has changed from homeowner- to renter-majority between 2006 and 2016
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The increase in the number of renters at national level in a decade’s time was only slightly slower than the total population growth over the same period, demonstrating a big swing toward renting
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The growth of the renter population outpaced that of homeowners in most large US cities
There’s no nice way to put this. The idea of owning a home lost much of the charm that once made it a structural element of the American Dream. Although the most recent data shows that the growth of the rental segment is losing momentum, it’s in part because homeownership has great losses to recover and it’s just starting to bounce back from the impact of the recession. In the late 2000s everybody was talking about the housing crisis, but the same wave that crushed the mortgage market—sending millions of homes to foreclosure—turned the apartment market downwind.
