 |
Homeownership in Record Plunge
Source: CNNMoney.com
Date: January 29 2008
The decline, while expected, is yet another indication of the housing market's sudden and dramatic turn.The Census Bureau report showed that home owners accounted for 67.8% of occupied homes in the fourth quarter, down 1.1 points from a year earlier. It's the largest year-over-year drop recorded in the report."It's an incredible story," said Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. "We're back to where we were in 2002, which is before the subprime nuttiness and run-up in prices. And it's not clear how much farther we're going to fall."The ownership rate was well below the 68.2% ownership rate in the third quarter of 2007. Homeownership rates, which have been tracked since 1965, hit a record high of 69.2% in the second and fourth quarters of 2004.
Foreclosures leap 75 percentA record 2.18 million homes sat vacant and available for sale in the fourth quarter, according to the report, up from 2.07 million in the third quarter and the 2.1 million a year earlier. The fourth-quarter reading on vacant homes for sale matched the previous record set in the first three months of 2007.
|
|
