Talk:Homeownership in the United States

Expansion
This article is going to be expanded, but as I am currently busy with other projects this might take a short while ;-) Regards,  Signature brendel  21:42, 26 September 2006 (UTC) An increase from 62.1% to 67.7% is not 5.6% but rather 9%. (The difference as a percentage of the base amount it the percentage increase).  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.23.113.197 (talk) 16:34, 13 January 2013 (UTC) My concern is the title itself--Homeownership in... Term homeownership does not reflect reality at all. Lets see. I do own 4 properties and two of them I build my self and everything is paid by cash and when I checked paperwork like titles transfer nowhere it says I do own these. It does say tile has been transferred in my name. My point here is there is no such thing as true ownership but only conditional rent from appropriate authority. For example if I have a mortgage on a property the owner is bank and I actually rent from bank. If we use term reasonable ownership or conditional ownership we are better with words but not reality. The point is nowhere on official paper in USA you will find word ownership which is reality. aferdman@att.net 2602:306:24D5:9A69:A8C6:65CE:454D:B9CB (talk) 14:02, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

Clarification Needed
These numbers appear to reflect how many people have mortgages and not the actual number of home "owners". You do not own a home until the full mortgage has been paid. I think many of us are looking for the number of people who really do own their own homes and not have mortgages. ;-) Regards,  Signature ssmith  21:42, 01 September 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.130.0.61 (talk)

I have been looking for information regarding really home owner I did not find any data at all. If somebody find something I would be amazing to post it on here or at the article. Regards signature

The final sentence of the introduction needs clarification: "many households are multi-bedroom rental units that contain more than one adult, all of whom do not own a home." "households" should say "occupied units", as that is the denominator of the home ownership rate. signature Sept 23, 2011 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 168.7.230.241 (talk) 16:45, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

I also was looking for numbers both current and historic on people who own their home fully as apposed to the number who are fractional owners along with mortgage underwriters. I am wondering if government policy has brought home ownership to a lower level by encouraging people to go deeper into debt.--Corumplex (talk) 23:47, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

I also agree with those above who voiced the same concern that a person does not actually own the home until it's free and clear of mortgage. Right now, in the USA, if you count free and clear with no debt, then it's only 19% of households actually own their home. That's a HUGE difference and this should be made clear and explored in this article. I also wonder if actual paid-off home ownership rates have gone down as mortgages have gotten bigger and longer-term. 2604:6000:F38E:1300:C8FD:584A:7A68:D822 (talk) 22:59, 6 July 2019 (UTC)

Chart
reqdiagram I added some historical data; it would be neat to make this into a bar or line graph. -- Beland 22:09, 17 April 2007 (UTC)


 * I will do so within the next couple of says, thanks for data. Regards,  Signature brendel  01:26, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

The chart under Historical appears to be incorrect; the cited source refers to data from the last decade, and does not cover the decades from 1960 to today. Additionally, the chart provided appears to be heavily at odds with the statistics here: https://www.census.gov/hhes/www/housing/census/historic/owner.html

Which is odd, since the chart references census.gov to begin with. I recommend that the chart be removed or refactored to reflect those numbers, or else the citation be corrected. Ronin2040 (talk) 20:07, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

Statistics: what do they mean?
I actually sought out this article to find one number -- How many homeowners are there in the United States? I read the entire article and did not find this number, although I found lengthy analysis of the statistics of home ownership. The problem is that the statistics used focused almost exclusively on the ownership rate (percentage) of various population groups -- by age or marriage or ethnicity, for example, as well as comparing home ownership rates of various nations. While I certainly can see that this information is both useful and valuable, it did not satisfy my needs and I fail to believe I am so unique as to be the only person interested in raw numbers. Give me the data and I can calculate percentages. Give me percentages only and I have no idea what the base numbers were.

Since percentages are used exclusively in this article, this means that the author(s) of this piece either had the raw numbers and calculated the percentages or accepted someone else's calculations at face value. When statistics are provided that can be used to fashion socio-political agendas, I am like my grade school, middle school and high school math teachers who insisted we "show our work." If you use U.S. Census data as the basis for the article's statistics, you can find the raw numbers in the same data and incorporate it into the article. In doing so, you will give the article greater depth, utility and veracity. It will be far more valuable to some to know that x number Hispanics owned y number homes for an ownership rate of z percent than simply to know that z percent of Hispanics owned homes in the U.S. in a given year without any idea of how many Hispanics were counted to derive the percentile.

Rate of ownership, as the only reported statistic category, is undoubtedly valuable for some purposes but practically meaningless if someone simply wants to know the raw numbers -- how many homes are/were owned in the United States in a given year? It would also be valuable for some to know how many were primary residences, second/vacation homes, and investment/rental properties, but that might be more than the author(s) can provide. Jack.Keller (talk) 15:24, 2 March 2009 (UTC)


 * This may be unnecessarily suspicious. Percentage is a more useful metric because you can make comparisons over time and across groups, if you had the raw numbers you'd see that home ownership increased over time simply because population increased - not a very useful finding. Calculating percentages is, as you say, a trivial process, so I'm inclined to think that it's acceptable to refer to them, as long as they are referenced, without showing working. 203.217.150.69 (talk) 06:28, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I note also that the data is hosted on the census website, therefore unless you have some grounds for suspecting that the census data is incorrect or is being misrepresented here, I think the use of percentages makes more sense. 203.217.150.69 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 06:30, 2 June 2010 (UTC).


 * I agree that the use of percentages makes more sense. What I don't like about the racial statistics is that there is no mention of whether race per se is correlated with home ownership, or whether the discrepancies can be explained by differences in income and family structure. DanBishop (talk) 10:04, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

House vs apartment/flat
There is any statistic about the split between houses and flats? I am under impression that houses are more expensive than flats and there are millions of people living in big cities. Most of the comments I read on various forums refers only to houses. MihaiC (talk) 11:43, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

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Up to date data
The data presented in this article is four years old. Can someone please update the data. Thanks! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mcdocs1 (talk • contribs) 20:48, 12 September 2020 (UTC)

Notification: Housing in the United States
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