WASHINGTON (AP) – Americans still want to own homes – if they can afford to. That’s the finding of a report being released Wednesday by the Harvard University Joint Center for Housing Studies.
The pressures of student debt, rising rents and the leftover wreckage from the nearly decade-old housing bust have restrained people’s ability to buy, even though the dream remains alive. The report sees reasons for both optimism (more millennials are poised to leave the nest) and concern (rising numbers of renters face extreme costs).
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.
Here are eight other major trends documented in the report:
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