US Rents Rise To New All-Time High; Homeownership Rate Stuck At 18 Year Low

One quarter ago, when we performed our regular update [5]on trends in US homeownership and rents, we said that  "The American Homeownership Dream is officially dead. Long live the New Normal American Dream: Renting." What happened since then is that the American Dream briefly became a full-blown nightmare when in Q3 mortgage rates exploded, pummeling the affordability of housing, and ground any new mortgage-funded transactions to a complete halt (don't believe us - just ask the tens of thousands of mortgage brokers let go by the TBTF banks in the past 6 months). Which is why it was not at all surprising to find that the just updated Q3 homeownership rate  has remained stuck at 65.1%: the lowest since 1995.

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