House Trailer, Imperial Valley, California. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.

In fairness, there are other items dominating the news, like the war on Iran, soaring gas prices and record-high diesel prices, and declining real wages, but declining homeownership rates among the young might still be worth a bit of attention.

Back in 2023 and 2024, major media outlets like the New York Times, the Washington Post, and CNN wrote a number of pieces about how young people have given up on the idea of ever owning a home. This was annoying because they were writing these pieces at a time when homeownership rates among the young were still above their pre-pandemic level.

There is always a range of views among people of any generation. These news outlets chose to find young people who had decided they had little prospect of becoming homeowners. They could have talked to millions of young people who were already homeowners, or they could have at least presented readers with the data on homeownership rates.

Apparently, they decided this would go against the story they wanted to tell. But now it actually is the case that homeownership rates among the young are below pre-pandemic levels. And with mortgage interest rates above 7.0 percent, that picture does not seem likely to change soon.

The homeownership rate for young people (under age 35) slowly recovered from the collapse of the housing bubble and peaked at 37.6 percent in the fourth quarter of 2019, just before the pandemic hit. It rose rapidly in the pandemic recovery, as pandemic checks, coupled with near-record low mortgage rates, allowed many young people to buy homes. The ownership rate peaked at 39.2 percent in the 2ndand 4th quarters of 2022. It then began to trail downwards due to higher mortgage rates and the pandemic-driven jump in house prices.

In the 4th quarter of 2024, it fell below the pre-pandemic peak, hitting 37.0 percent. It has continued to edge downward, hitting 36.8 percent in the 2nd quarter of this year.

This decline in homeownership rates among the young under Trump has not prompted the same sort of concern about the abandonment of the American Dream as it did under Biden. Maybe it is because there are enough other problems to fill the news, but it seems this one should not be forgotten now that it actually is a real problem.

This first ran on Dean Baker’s Beat the Press blog.