9 Facts About Housing in 2019

The U.S. Census Bureau provides data with a long lag time.  They recently released the American Community Survey estimates for 2019, in September 2020. Though not the most current housing information, it nonetheless provides a valuable and deeper look at long-term market trends. With the pandemic rapidly changing socioeconomic conditions across the country, this information may not reflect the current situation for many households. However, it’s always good to know how our lives were pre-pandemic.

This blog post provides a comprehensive picture of housing in America using the trends of the following 9 factors; household growth, homeownership rate, household size, owner and rental vacancy rates, type of homes, adults living with their parents, share of income for housing, home prices, residential mobility.

Overall, based on the above, the housing market was strong in 2019. Nearly 1.2 million more households became homeowners while both household size and vacancy rates fell compared to a year earlier. This translates to higher housing demand in 2019. In the meantime, single-family detached homes remain the most popular homes in the market at 61% of the housing inventory. It’s noteworthy that fewer owners spent above 30% of their income on housing as they accumulated more than $60K since 2010 in wealth gains.

Housing in 2019 by metro area

Since all real estate is local, we computed these 9 facts for each metropolitan area. After comparing these estimates at local level, we identified the following metro areas¹ to outperform in these 9 factors:

• Largest household creation compared to a year earlier:
  Longview, TX (33%); Fayetteville, NC (32%); Charleston, WV (20%)
   
• Highest homeownership rate in 2019:
  Punta Gorda, FL (82%); Barnstable Town, MA (80%); Daphne-Fairhope-Foley, AL (79%)
   
• Largest decrease of household size:
  Barnstable Town, MA (-0.22%); Longview, TX (-0.17%); Boulder, CO (-0.16%)
   
• Lowest homeowner vacancy rate:
  Santa Rosa-Petaluma, CA (0.3%); Lubbock, TX (0.3%); Boulder, CO (0.4%); Rockford, IL (0.4%); Santa Cruz-Watsonville, CA (0.4%)
   
• Lowest rental vacancy rate:
  Springfield, MO (1.2%); Fort Collins, CO (1.5%); Lake Havasu City-Kingman, AZ (1.8%)
   
• Most adults moving with their parents compared to a year earlier:
  Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX (121,957); Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, CA (69,942); Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land, TX (53,695)
   
• Fewer owners who spend more than 30% of their income for housing:
  Huntsville, AL (13%); Kalamazoo-Portage, MI (13%); Beaumont-Port Arthur, TX (13%)
   
• Highest price appreciation since 2010:
  Modesto, CA (90%); Las Vegas-Henderson-Paradise, NV (84%); Stockton, CA (81%)
   
• Highest increase of owners moving in the area within the last year:
  Fort Collins, CO (64%); Utica-Rome, NY (56%); Fayetteville, NC (51%)

Select a metropolitan area from the dropdown below to see the 9 facts about housing in your area:

¹ Among areas with at least 100,000 housing units