The Steady Rise of Renting

Writing in the wake of the great financial crisis of 2008, I argued that the ultimate impact of the crash would be a “Great Reset,” as the U.S. gradually shifted away from its decades-long obsession with suburban homeownership and toward a greater role for renting in cities and urban areas.

Now, a recent report from the real estate website Trulia provides substantial evidence of this Great Reset from owning to renting. The report examines growth in renting versus owning across the U.S., as well as the rise in rental housing prices and the growing housing burdens faced by renters between 2006 (two years prior to the economic crisis) and 2014. To get at this, the report uses data from the American Community Survey for 50 of the largest U.S. metros. My MPI colleague Charlotta Mellander then went back to ACS and extracted data on the share of households that are renters versus owners and ran a correlation analysis of the key economic, demographic, and social factors that bear on them.