Homeownership Statistics in US 2026 | Key Facts

Home Ownership in America 2026

Owning a home has long been the cornerstone of the American Dream — a deeply personal milestone tied to financial security, stability, and the building of generational wealth. As of February 2026, the latest government-verified data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey / Housing Vacancy Survey (CPS/HVS), released on February 3, 2026, confirms that the national homeownership rate stands at 65.7% in Q4 2025 — the highest reading of the full year 2025 and up 0.4 percentage points from the prior quarter. With 133.7 million total U.S. households recorded as of Q4 2025, and approximately 87.8 million owner-occupied homes across the country, the scale of American homeownership remains enormous even as affordability pressures continue to tighten for millions of aspiring buyers. This figure is the most current and authoritative single snapshot of homeownership in the United States in 2026, based entirely on official government data.

What makes the homeownership picture in 2026 especially compelling is what the headline number does not reveal on its own. The 25-year average homeownership rate sits at 66.3%, meaning today’s 65.7% rate still trails that long-run benchmark by 0.6 percentage points. The 4-quarter moving average is 65.3% — its lowest point since Q1 2020 — reflecting that the modest Q4 uptick has not yet reversed the downward drift caused by elevated mortgage rates, historically tight for-sale inventory, and multidecade-low housing affordability. At the same time, meaningful shifts are happening beneath the surface: householders under age 35 saw the largest single-year improvement of any age group in 2025, rising 1.6 percentage points to 37.9%, while the racial homeownership gap between non-Hispanic White (75.1%) and Black (44.2%) households remains a stark and persistent divide at nearly 31 percentage points. This article presents the most current, 100% government-verified data available as of today — February 27, 2026 — to give readers a complete, fact-driven overview of homeownership statistics in the US in 2026.

Interesting Facts About Homeownership in the US 2026

Before diving into the full statistical breakdown by region, age, race, and income, here are the most important and eye-opening facts drawn entirely from U.S. government sources — all verified as of Q4 2025 / February 2026.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Survey/Housing Vacancy Survey (CPS/HVS), Q4 2025 Press Release, February 3, 2026. Available at: census.gov/housing/hvs. Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (FRED), Series RHORUSQ156N, updated February 4, 2026.

The sheer span of data in this table makes one thing immediately clear: homeownership in the United States in 2026 is defined by extremes and stark divides. At one end, Americans aged 65 and over own homes at a rate of 79.0%, reflecting decades of equity accumulation, inheritance, and wealth-building through property. At the other end, those under 35 own at just 37.9% — a gap of more than 41 percentage points between the youngest and oldest American householders. Equally striking is the fact that the current 65.7% national rate remains 3.5 percentage points below the 2004 all-time peak of 69.2%, a deficit that has persisted for over two decades despite shifting economic conditions, federal policy interventions, and historically strong demand from large millennial cohorts now in their prime homebuying years.

The income and racial divides embedded in these facts are just as profound. The 26.5 percentage point gap between above-median and below-median income homeownership (78.9% vs. 52.4%) is widening — with the higher-income group rising while the lower-income group fell year-over-year. Meanwhile, the nearly 31 percentage point gap between non-Hispanic White and Black homeownership rates (75.1% vs. 44.2%) represents one of the most persistent structural inequalities in the American economy. The fact that the Black rate declined while the White rate increased in the most recent annual comparison means this gap is not narrowing — it is expanding. These headline facts set the stage for the deeper, category-by-category analysis that follows.

Overall Homeownership Rate in the US 2026

The most authoritative single measure of US homeownership statistics in 2026 is the quarterly rate published by the U.S. Census Bureau through its Housing Vacancy Survey. The table below presents the full quarterly trend from 2024 through Q4 2025, the most recent official data available as of today, February 27, 2026.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Survey/Housing Vacancy Survey, February 3, 2026 (Q4 2025 data) and December 11, 2025 (Q3 2025 data). Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, FRED Series RHORUSQ156N, updated February 4, 2026. Available at: census.gov/housing/hvs and fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RHORUSQ156N

The quarterly trend in US homeownership statistics from 2024 through Q4 2025 tells a story of stability on the surface — but careful examination reveals a more nuanced picture. The Q4 2025 rate of 65.7% matches Q4 2024, meaning the year-over-year figure is statistically flat. What changed was the intra-year trajectory: 2025 opened at 65.1% in Q1 and hit a trough of 65.0% in Q2 — the lowest reading since early 2020 — before recovering to close the year at 65.7%. The 4-quarter moving average of 65.3% confirms that the full-year 2025 average was softer than the 2024 baseline. The Census Bureau flagged an important data caveat: due to a federal government funding lapse (government shutdown), October 2025 data was not collected, meaning Q4 2025 estimates are based only on November and December 2025 data, which adds a higher-than-usual degree of statistical uncertainty to the latest quarter’s figures and warrants caution in comparisons.

The vacancy rate trends are equally revealing. The homeowner vacancy rate climbed from 0.8% in Q1 2024 to 1.2% in Q4 2025 — a meaningful increase that signals a modest loosening of for-sale inventory after years of extreme tightness. The rental vacancy rate climbed steadily from 6.6% in early 2024 to 7.2% by Q4 2025, driven by the completion of a large wave of multifamily construction. Most significantly, the total number of U.S. households grew from 132.2 million (Q4 2024) to 133.7 million (Q4 2025) — an addition of 1.5 million households in a single year, with approximately 1 million being new owner-occupied homes and 0.46 million being new renter households. Even in a challenging affordability environment, this household formation data confirms that homeownership remains the dominant choice for newly forming households when economic conditions allow it.

Homeownership Rate by Region in the US 2026

Geography shapes homeownership rates in the United States dramatically, with a regional spread of more than 10 percentage points separating the highest and lowest regions as of Q4 2025. The Census Bureau’s Q4 2025 data also includes homeowner vacancy rates by region, which reveal important differences in local market tightness across the country.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Survey/Housing Vacancy Survey, Table 5 — Homeownership Rates for the United States and Regions: Q4 2025, released February 3, 2026. Pro Builder, citing U.S. Census Bureau CPS/HVS, February 3, 2026 (probuilder.com).

The Midwest leads all four U.S. regions with a homeownership rate of 71.3% in Q4 2025, and its homeowner vacancy rate of just 0.7% — the lowest of any region — confirms that available for-sale inventory there is extremely limited, even relative to the already-tight national market. The Midwest’s affordability advantage is real and durable: states like Iowa, Indiana, Ohio, and Michigan consistently rank among the most affordable housing markets in the country, with median home prices in many markets well below the national median, enabling a broader cross-section of households to achieve ownership. The South at 66.5% holds second place, buoyed by population growth, a robust pipeline of new single-family construction, and Sun Belt migration from more expensive coastal regions — though the South’s homeowner vacancy rate of 1.5% is the highest of any region, signaling the greatest relative availability of for-sale homes there compared to other parts of the country.

The Northeast’s year-over-year improvement to 63.1% stands out as the only region where homeownership rates rose to a statistically significant degree compared to Q4 2024. This increase likely reflects several converging trends: remote work flexibility enabling households to purchase in more affordable secondary and suburban markets within the region, a gradual expansion of entry-level inventory away from core urban centers, and the ongoing aging of the large millennial cohort into peak homebuying years in a region with a high concentration of this demographic. The West at 60.8% remains the lowest-rate region by a wide margin, with California, Hawaii, Oregon, and Nevada — all states with extremely high median home prices — collectively anchoring the West’s ownership rate well below the national average. The income required to afford a home in major Western metros has reached extraordinary levels: $224,190 annually in Los Angeles, $235,343 in San Diego, and $321,463 in San Francisco, according to Q4 2025 affordability calculations based on a 30-year fixed mortgage and 20% down payment.

Homeownership Rate by Age in the US 2026

Age is one of the most powerful predictors of homeownership in the United States. The Q4 2025 data from the U.S. Census Bureau provides exact rates across five age groups, with year-over-year comparisons that reveal encouraging progress among younger Americans and a notable setback for middle-aged householders.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Survey/Housing Vacancy Survey, Table 6 — Homeownership Rates by Age of Householder: Q4 2025, released February 3, 2026. NAHB Eye on Housing analysis of CPS/HVS data, published February 3, 2026 (eyeonhousing.org). Note: 55–64 and 65+ year-over-year figures are directional as stated in the Census Bureau press release.

The under-35 age group’s jump to 37.9% — a gain of 1.6 percentage points from Q4 2024’s 36.3% — is the most significant and encouraging data point in the entire 2025 age breakdown. The Census Bureau confirmed this as a statistically significant year-over-year increase — only one of two age groups to show statistically significant change, and the only one to improve. Younger householders, including older Gen Z (born 1997–2012) and younger millennials (born early 1980s to mid-1990s), are particularly sensitive to mortgage rate movements and the availability of entry-level homes. Their improvement in 2025 suggests that gradual income growth, greater geographic flexibility driven by hybrid and remote work, and an expanding pool of starter-home inventory in more affordable secondary markets are beginning to translate into meaningful ownership gains at the most foundational level of the market.

The sharp 1.5 percentage point decline among householders aged 45–54 — from 71.0% down to 69.5% — is the starkest counter-trend in the Q4 2025 data and the only change that the Census Bureau identified as statistically significant alongside the under-35 improvement. This is the prime wealth-building and career-peak age group, and it registered the largest year-over-year drop of any cohort in 2025. The factors at play likely include life transitions such as divorce, job-driven relocations, and decisions to downsize or move to rentals in high-cost metro areas, as well as the financial complexity of trading up in an elevated-rate environment when a household already holds a low-rate mortgage. The 65-and-over group’s rate of 79.0% — nearly twice the under-35 rate — reflects the immense compounding advantage of having owned a home for decades. This 41.1 percentage point generational gap in homeownership is one of the starkest and most consequential wealth divides in America today.

Homeownership Rate by Race and Ethnicity in the US 2026

Racial and ethnic disparities in homeownership represent some of the most persistent structural inequalities in the American housing market. The Q4 2025 data from the U.S. Census Bureau delivers a clear and deeply concerning picture: the gap between the highest and lowest ownership rates across racial groups exceeds 30 percentage points, and it widened further in 2025.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Survey/Housing Vacancy Survey, Table 7 — Homeownership Rates by Race and Ethnicity of Householder: Q4 2025, released February 3, 2026. Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, FRED Series BOAAAHORUSQ156N (Black homeownership rate), updated February 4, 2026. Available at: fred.stlouisfed.org/series/BOAAAHORUSQ156N

The non-Hispanic White homeownership rate of 75.1% increased from Q4 2024 — a statistically significant gain confirmed by the Census Bureau — while the Black homeownership rate fell to 44.2%, explicitly confirmed as a statistically significant decline. These two simultaneous movements — one group’s rate rising, the other’s falling — resulted in a widening of the already-vast racial homeownership gap in 2025. The Census Bureau noted that no other racial or ethnic category showed a significant change from Q4 2024 rates, meaning only these two extremes moved in a meaningful way. This divergence is not random. According to the National Association of REALTORS’ 2025 Snapshot of Race and Home Buying, Black mortgage applicants face a denial rate of 21% and Hispanic applicants face a denial rate of 17%, compared to just 11% for White applicants and 9% for Asian applicants — a disparity in credit access that predates and perpetuates the homeownership gap. The 30.9 percentage point Black-White homeownership gap in Q4 2025 represents a persistent failure of equitable housing access that stretches back to deliberate policies of exclusion spanning many decades.

The Asian, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (NHPI) rate of 63.1% — above the national average but below the White rate by 12 points — reflects a complex reality: many Asian households have strong income levels and savings rates, but are heavily concentrated in the most expensive housing markets in the country, particularly on the West Coast and in major metro areas, where even high incomes often cannot overcome the barrier of prices exceeding $1 million in many submarkets. Hispanic homeownership at approximately 51.1% represents a historically meaningful benchmark, as this group added more than 3.5 million homeowner households between 2013 and 2023 — the largest absolute and percentage-point gain of any racial or ethnic group over that decade, according to NAR data. With one in three Hispanic households currently in the 25–40 prime homebuying age range, this group’s demographic momentum positions it as a key driver of homeownership growth in the years ahead, provided structural barriers to credit access and affordability can be meaningfully reduced.

Homeownership Rate by Family Income in the US 2026

Income is the single most powerful determinant of homeownership in America. The Q4 2025 data from the U.S. Census Bureau confirms a growing divide between households at and above the median family income and those below it — a divide that widened in 2025 as the above-median group gained while the below-median group lost ground.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Survey/Housing Vacancy Survey, Table 8 — Homeownership Rates by Family Income: Q4 2025, released February 3, 2026. Available at: census.gov/housing/hvs. Federal Reserve Board of Governors, Report on the Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households in 2024, May 2025 (federalreserve.gov).

The income-based homeownership gap in 2026 is both massive and widening. The 78.9% rate for above-median income households rose by 0.8 percentage points compared to Q4 2024 — meaning higher-earning families were more likely to own in 2025 than in 2024. At the same time, the 52.4% rate for below-median income households declined year-over-year. This simultaneous divergence — one group gaining, the other losing — resulted in the income-based ownership gap reaching at least 26.5 percentage points as of Q4 2025. The underlying dynamics are consistent and relentless: higher-income households carry larger down payment savings, stronger credit profiles, better access to favorable mortgage products, and the financial capacity to compete in bidding situations that have become common in constrained markets. They are also far better positioned to absorb the monthly cost increase associated with elevated mortgage rates, which have added hundreds of dollars per month to the cost of financing a typical American home purchase compared to the historically low rate environment of 2020–2021.

For lower-income households, the barriers compound at every stage of the homebuying process. The Federal Reserve Board’s Report on the Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households (May 2025) found that among renters who do not own, the most commonly cited barriers were inability to afford a down payment and inability to qualify for a mortgage. These are structural features of a housing market where median home prices have more than doubled over the past decade while wages for lower-income workers have grown far more slowly, making the wealth accumulation required for a down payment increasingly difficult for those in the bottom half of the income distribution. The 26.5 percentage point income gap in Q4 2025 — and the fact that it is growing wider — represents the clearest and most urgent quantification of what affordable housing advocates consistently describe: the American housing market in 2026 works extremely well for those who already have significant wealth, and with increasing difficulty for those who do not.

Housing Vacancy Rates in the US 2026

Vacancy rates serve as one of the most reliable real-time indicators of housing market health, revealing both the availability of for-sale inventory and the supply-demand balance in the rental sector. The Q4 2025 Housing Vacancy Survey from the U.S. Census Bureau shows a rental market that is gradually loosening while the for-sale market remains historically constrained.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Survey/Housing Vacancy Survey, February 3, 2026 (Q4 2025 vacancy data by region); December 11, 2025 (Q3 2025 median asking prices). Pro Builder, citing CPS/HVS, February 3, 2026. Available at: census.gov/housing/hvs

The national homeowner vacancy rate of 1.2% is slightly above Q4 2024’s 1.1%, which signals a modest but real increase in for-sale housing availability. A balanced housing market typically carries a homeowner vacancy rate of around 2%, so at 1.2%, the for-sale market remains tight by historical standards — there are simply not enough homes available for sale to meet demand in most markets, which sustains upward pressure on prices. The regional breakdown is particularly telling: the Midwest’s homeowner vacancy rate of just 0.7% — the lowest of any region — confirms that even in the nation’s most affordable region, for-sale inventory is severely constrained. The South’s homeowner vacancy rate of 1.5% is the highest of any region, reflecting the significant volume of new single-family construction underway in Texas, Florida, and the Carolinas, where builders have been responding aggressively to the surge in population migration from more expensive coastal regions.

The rental vacancy rate’s rise from 6.6% in Q1 2024 to 7.2% in Q4 2025 reflects the completion of a historically large wave of multifamily apartment construction. As more rental units enter the market, renters gain modest negotiating leverage and rent growth moderates — both of which indirectly support homeownership by giving aspiring buyers more time to save for down payments while keeping monthly rental costs from escalating further. The median asking rent of $1,534/month for vacant-for-rent units and the median asking sales price of $365,800 for vacant-for-sale units (both Q3 2025, the most recent available quarter with complete data) reveal the fundamental economics facing American households in 2026: the buy-versus-rent calculation remains difficult for a large share of the population, and the availability and affordability of both housing types continues to shape the US homeownership rate in ways that will play out across the remainder of this decade.

Historical Homeownership Rate Trends in the US 2026

Placing today’s US homeownership statistics in 2026 in their proper historical context requires looking back across more than six decades of U.S. Census Bureau data. The trajectory from 1965 to the present reveals how economic cycles, policy changes, financial crises, and demographic shifts have collectively shaped homeownership in America.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Survey/Housing Vacancy Survey Historical Tables, census.gov/housing/hvs/data/histtabs. Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, FRED Series RHORUSQ156N, updated February 4, 2026. NAHB Eye on Housing, February 3, 2026.

The historical record of US homeownership is shaped by three defining episodes in the modern era. The first was the sustained rise from the mid-1990s to the all-time peak of 69.2% in 2004, driven by financial deregulation, the aggressive expansion of subprime mortgage lending, government-sponsored enterprise growth, and an extended period of low interest rates that temporarily made monthly mortgage payments accessible to a broader pool of households than ever before. Much of this expansion, in retrospect, was built on fragile financial foundations. The second transformative episode — the collapse from 2007 through 2016 — saw millions of foreclosures, catastrophic wealth destruction for working families, and the long post-crisis crawl to the 63.4% low in 2016, the weakest reading in more than five decades. The ripple effects of this period continue to shape homeownership demographics today, particularly for households that suffered credit damage and foreclosures during those years.

The third and current period — gradual, uneven recovery from 2016 through 2026 — has been interrupted twice: first by the brief COVID-era surge to roughly 67.9% in Q2 2020, when lockdowns reduced consumer spending and historically low mortgage rates created a temporary window of affordability, and then by the rapid reversal as rates surged in 2022 and 2023. By 2025, the rate had settled back to the mid-65% range. Nine years after the post-crisis low, the Q4 2025 rate of 65.7% is only 2.3 percentage points above that 2016 trough and still 1.5 percentage points below the long-run 25-year average of 66.3%. The next official government data release is scheduled for April 28, 2026 (Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, FRED, confirmed as of February 4, 2026), when Q1 2026 figures will be published. The homeownership story in America in 2026 is one of resilience against significant structural headwinds — and the data confirms that story remains very much in progress.

Disclaimer: This research report is compiled from publicly available sources. While reasonable efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, no representation or warranty, express or implied, is given as to the completeness or reliability of the information. We accept no liability for any errors, omissions, losses, or damages of any kind arising from the use of this report.

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