Family Formation

While the homeownership rate slipped to a 26-year low of 63.8% in Q1/15, it’s now falling for the right reasons. Rather than dropping as homeowners become renters, it’s falling because hordes of new, primarily renter households are being formed. Between Q1/14 and Q1/15 1.5 million households were formed and between Q4/14 and Q4/13 1.7 million were formed, a far cry from the lackluster household formation rate of 500,000/year since 2007.