Home ownership hits lowest level since 1965

[Bluebear]

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- As the foreclosure crisis continues to wreak havoc on the housing market, a source of national pride has taken a sour turn. Home ownership is on the decline and, according to a recent Morgan Stanley report, the United States is fast becoming a nation of renters.
Last Friday, the Census Bureau reported that the percentage of people who owned a home had dropped to 65.9% during the second quarter -- its lowest level since the first quarter of 1998 and a far cry from the high of 69.2% reached in late 2004.

Yet, in a research paper issued a week earlier, Morgan Stanley (MS, Fortune 500) analysts Oliver Chang, Vishwanath Tirupattur and James Egan argued that the home ownership rate is even lower than the Census Bureau statistics say.

In fact, once they factored in delinquent mortgage borrowers (the ones who are likely to lose their homes at some point), Morgan Stanley calculated that the home ownership rate is more like 59.2%.
That's the lowest level since the Census Bureau started keeping quarterly records back in 1965.


http://money.cnn.com/2011/08/05/real_estate/home_ownership/index.htm?section=money_topstories

[LiberalEsto]

1. We should re-frame the term "foreclosure crisis"

and start calling it the banks' homes grab, house theft, or something like that.

[ixion]

2. BushCo's pWnership Society has been a catastrophic success

as planned.

This was a broad stroke project using the Disaster Capitalism model. Wheeeee!

[FarCenter]

3. Only about 40% of "home owners" actually own their homes

The rest have mortgages and actually own leveraged real estate investments, many of which have lost a lot of money.