Homeownership Rate Declines

The percentage of American home owners fell to 67.3 percent at the end of the fourth quarter of 2009, the lowest percentage since the second quarter of 2000. The homeownership rate reached a high of 69 percent in 2004, fueled by low interest rates and easy credit. But the rate began to fall in 2006 as some owners failed to make their payments and faced foreclosure. Since then nearly 4 million homes have been lost to foreclosure. “The homeownership data I think really just underscores how this country as a whole became obsessed with getting people into homes," says Mike Larson, real estate and interest rate analyst at Weiss Research Inc., an investment-research firm. "You can do all kinds of things to get people into a house, which we did; the real problem is making it so they can stay there."

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