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Chicago Tribune: Homeownership ranks are thinning
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What percentage of Americans own their own homes? It depends on how you count.
The officially tally is about 65.5 percent. But according to Sean Fergus, a manager with John Burns Real Estate Consulting, that number includes 3.8 million homeownser who are 90 days late or more on their mortgage.
If you subtract those homeowners, which Fergus refers to as "renters in waiting," the percentage of Americans who own drops down to 62.1. That's the lowest level in nearly 50 years.
Whether you believe in the official homeownership tally or the John Burns number, what has really caught people by surprise is how quickly those numbers have collapsed.
Before the Great Recession decimated homeowners and wiped away trillions of dollars in home equity as many as 69 percent of American households were homeowners. Losing 7 percent means more than 8 million families are no longer owning homes.
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