According to Census Bureau’s Housing Vacancy Survey, the US homeownership rate dropped to 62.9 per cent in 2Q 2016, according to Eye on Housing Tuesday.
Elsewhere, on a price-to-rent basis, the Case-Shiller National index is back to July 2003 levels, the Composite 20 index is back to June 2003 levels, and the Core– Logic index is back to May 2003, said Calculated Risk Tuesday.
US Home Ownership Rate: June 2016
According to US Census Bureau’s Housing Vacancy Survey (HVS) Thursday, the homeownership rate dropped to 62.9 per cent in 2Q 2016. It is the lowest level since 1965, when the Census Bureau started tracking these data. This was a second straight quarterly decrease, down by 60 basis points on a nonseasonally adjusted basis from three months ago.
The nonseasonally adjusted homeowner vacancy rate remained low at 1.7 per cent in 2Q 2016. At the same time, the national rental vacancy rate dropped to 6.7 per cent, down 10 basis points from 2Q 2015.
The housing stock-based HVS revealed that the number of households increased to 118.3 million for 2Q 2016, almost a million higher than a year ago. On a less volatile one-year moving average basis, the pace of household formations slowed down to less than 1 per cent in 2016.
US Home Price-to-Rent Ratio: 2Q 2016
The Case-Shiller National House Price Index increased 5 per cent year-over-year in May.
It is important to look at prices in real terms (inflation adjusted), according to Calculated Risk Tuesday. Case-Shiller, CoreLogic and others report nominal house prices. As an example, if a house price was US$200,000 in January 2000, the price would be close to US$275,000 today adjusted for inflation (37 per cent).
It has been almost ten years since the housing bubble peak. In the Case-Shiller release, the National Index was reported as being 2.8 per cent below the bubble peak. However, in real terms, the National index is still about 17.1 per cent below the bubble peak.
In nominal terms, the Case-Shiller National index (SA) is back to November 2005 levels, and the Case-Shiller Composite 20 In- dex (SA) is back to June 2005 levels, and the CoreLogic index (NSA) is back to June 2005.
In real terms, the National index is back to January 2004 levels, the Composite 20 index is back to October 2003, and the Core- Logic index back to November 2003.
In real terms, house prices are back to late 2003 levels.
