US Rents Hit Record Highs As Homeownership Plunges To 18 Year Lows

Used by permission


ZeroHedge.com




The American Homeownership Dream is officially dead. Long live the New Normal American Dream: Renting.
According to the latest quarterly homeownership data released by the Census Bureau, the raw homeownership rate of 65.0% was unchanged from last quarter and 0.4% lower than a year ago. And on a seasonally adjusted basis (not sure why homeownership is adjusted for seasons: people who live in a house in the winter generally live under a bridge in the summer?), the percentage of Americans who have a house declined from 65.2% to 65.1%: the lowest since 1995.

Obviously the flipside to most "children" in their mid-30s still living in their parents' basements is that those wishing to brave the New Normal world will have to spend a lot for rent.
A record lot in fact: the median asking rent for US vacant housing units just hit an all time high of $735 per month.

The pain is most acute for those renting in the Northeast, where the median rent soared by $65 to a record high of $961. What is perhaps more notable is that the median rent in the Northeast (the financial capital of the US), is now decidedly above the median asking rent in the West (traditionally the entertainment and entrepreneurial capital of the US).

So rents are soaring. Which should mean that so are wages and/or personal income right? Wrong.
Presenting the annual change in real US wages...

And the 5 year change in Personal Income.

So how sustainable are the soaring rents shown above? We will let Blackstone and all those other Wall Street firms capitalizing on record low (until recently) rates to become America's largest landlords answer that one.

The immoral greed of Atlas Shrugged destroys a community

Since this story is still drawing comments, let me add one more:

This relationship between Clearwire and TeleTech was obviously a scam to avoid paying severance pay, among other benefits. They shuffled employees back and forth in a time-line short enough to comply with the WARN Act and at the same time deny severance to those it knew it would terminate.

The excuse by TeleTech is laughable. In less than one month, they reanalyzed their entire operation and decided that they needed to dump the employees. What a lie.

This was planned from the beginning to avoid the costs associated with severance and whatever other benefits the employees would have earned.

Clearwire and TeleTech are two very sleazy operations.

But on a very human level, what do you have to do to yourself to become the official liar (aka spokesperson) for them? What do you have to tell yourself each day that you know you are going to lie your fanny off, and do it all with a straight face? What a degenerate crew.

OK, add more misery to the problems we face in The Great Depression V. 2.0. Three hundred fifteen lives are being destroyed while the people at the top collect their bonuses and expense out their lifestyle.

Thank the author of Atlas Shrugged for providing the rationale that unlimited, immoral greed is good. You are being destroyed by the Top 1% of households who now pull in 24% of all personal income. It is most likely that you are not in that 1%, and to support them is in your own way signing your economic death warrant.

They aren't creating jobs with their tax breaks, they are hoarding cash, investing in metals and other commodities, making bets in the stock market, and otherwise making sure they continue to get a bigger slice of the pie by destroying the Middle Class - that's you.

Just a thought to keep in mind the next time you think these people are like you, and that your best interests and theirs are identical.

They aren't.
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