A Demographic Housing Seismic Shift

At apartmentmarketingsolutions.com, we’ve identified some key areas where properties can differentiate themselves.  One of the least exploited is ethnic differentiation.  Over the next decade this is an even more significant fact as more than 72% of new households will be minority according to the 2009 Joint Housing Study.  This implies a seismic shift in the proportion rental homes for the nation.  For the first time since records have begun U.S. homeownership is on track to move below the historic average of 62% toward a low 50% range (and this does not consider impact of the housing crisis driven recession on homeowner trends).

Since minorities have lower incomes and in general rent at a greater rate than whites.  In fact, if we break this down further, U.S. census data shows that blacks rent at a greater than 50% rate compared to home ownership.  This jumps to more than 60% for the Hispanic Latino population.

Where does this lead?  It turns out that of new households, Hispanic Latinos are 36% (50% of the 72%) of the total.  If we extrapolate from this point we know that of total household figures:

If this trend holds, homeownership will fall below 50% over the next decade or two a fact no study has explicitly recognized.   Should this trend hold the course, besides indicating drastically reduced single family household growth there will be a equally large rise in multifamily housing requirements.  Further, management companies that do not address winning larger portions of this demographic will struggle to maintain occupancy. Apartmentmarketingsolutions.com sees Spanish leasing and marketing tools as a critical step to address this trend.  Further, apartmentmarketingsolutions.com believes that beyond the steps taken that research understanding these trends are key competitive differentiators.