Home ownership is an indicator of housing affordability and security. For most U.S. families, the home is the greatest asset in their portfolio. A recent study commissioned by the Consumer Federation of America and Fannie Mae concluded that homeownership is the main path to wealth and housing security for lower-income and minority Americans.
A community with high home ownership rates usually exhibits different socio-economic indicators than a community with low home ownership rates. As the recent financial crisis has underlined, however, there are probably limits to the share of households owning their own homes. Increasing home ownership in the face of rising affordability challenges may lead to an increasing rate of foreclosures instead of asset-building.
For this indicator, homeowners are defined as the people who are in the process of buying a home through a loan or mortgage, or people who have already paid off their loan or mortgage and own the home outright.
This indicator measures the share of households who own their own home in Walla Walla & Columbia Counties combined. Washington State and the U.S. are offered as benchmarks. Additional information, including historical data previous to Walla Walla becoming a Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) in 2013, can be found in the “Download Data” section.
According to the US Census Bureau, the pandemic made the collection of accurate one-year estimates for the American Community Survey (ACS) impossible in 2020. Five-year estimates might be available for popular series in early 2022.