From Own To Rent: Who Lost The American Dream?

The financial crisis of 2008 created the biggest disruption to the U.S. housing market since the Great Depression. From the top of the housing bubble roughly a decade ago until just recently, there’s been a five percentage-point increase in the number of renters to owners to 43.3% from 38.5%. But who are these renters? Ultimately, housing markets with larger spikes in foreclosures during the crisis were more likely to exhibit larger jumps in renting through that time period, especially in housing markets on the West and East Coasts. In fact, Las Vegas saw the number of renter households jump nine percentage points to 49.4% of all households in the nine years prior to 2015. Not only are the percentage of renters increasing, so are the rents – which have risen faster than incomes. Average rents in the top 50 markets have risen 22.3%, while incomes nationally fell 5.8% in the nine years since 2006. To put this into context, a typical household spent just 29.7% of their income on rent in 2006. Since the economic crisis, this number peaked in 2011 at 31.5%, then fell slightly to 30.7% in 2014. See more at: http://www.trulia.com/blog/trends/own-to-rent/#sthash.FNJTcY3G.dpufRead less