Pop Quiz: Over the last two decades, who has seen their housing costs increase the most, home owners or renters? If you guessed renters, go to the head of the class.
According to the Census Bureau, renters paid a median of $728 a month for rent and utilities in 2005, or $1,176 when adjusted for inflation. But the latest American Community Survey found that they paid a median of $1,487 in 2024, an increase of $311.
Surprise: Owners saw their median housing costs decline over the same period.
They paid more a month than renters. Their median monthly cost 20 years ago was $961 or $1,552 adjusted for inflation. But by 2024, the median had gone down $157 to $1,395.
Part of the reason for the drop in ownership cost was that more owners do not have a mortgage. The share of owned homes with financing still in place fell from 67.9% in 2005 to 59.7% in 2024.
Owners without a mortgage still pay property insurance and taxes, utilities and such other fees as owner association dues. But those costs typically account for a smaller portion than a mortgage, the ACS survey showed.
In 2024, the median monthly cost for owners without a mortgage was $664 compared to $2,035 for those with one.
Despite the 2007 housing crash and the COVID pandemic, Census says the nation's housing stock continued to expand over the last two decades to accommodate a growing population.
There were some 288 million people in households in 2005, the first year of the ACS. As of last year, according to the most recent data released last week, the household population has grown to nearly 332 million.
Over that period, the type of housing they occupy has changed. More than 20 million units were added to the stock between 2005 and 2024. And about 13.5 million were traditional single-family detached houses.
But apartment structures with 50 or more units nearly doubled. During the 20-year period, 4.4 million apartment units were built, a 77.4% increase to 10.2 million in 2024. The increase in single-family houses was only 17.8%.
During the survey time frame, the number of vacant houses rose by only about 570,000 units, reflecting the tightening housing market for both owners and renters.
But the number of vacant houses for sale fell by nearly half-a-million units, from 1.3 million to fewer than 850,000. At the same time, the number of units available for sale as a proportion of all the units for sale or owned (known as the home owner vacancy rate) slid from 1.7% to 1.0%.
Houses vacant only part of the year, largely because they're used for recreational or seasonal purposes, increased to about 4.3 million units in 2024, up from nearly 3.9 million units in 2005.
