Homeownership has been remarkably stable in the United States over the last 60 years, rising from a low of 63% in 1965 to a high of 69% in 2007, only to crash back to 63% during the Great Recession.
More than 65% now own their own home, but rising mortgage rates and stubbornly high real estate prices are driving the hopes of those who don’t already own their home to historic lows.
As recently as 2016, a majority of renters (56%) believed they would own their own home someday. That number has fallen to just 43%, an all-time low.
What is odd about this new wave of rising real estate prices, however, is that it is occurring even as the most expensive metropolitan areas are all losing population. New York (-327,955), Los Angeles (-175,913), San Francisco (-116,385), and Chicago (-91,671) all lost population since 2020. Overall, among all metropolitan areas with more than 1 million people, the population declined by 0.16%.
Not all major cities are suffering population loss, however. Dallas (+97,290), Phoenix (+78,220), Houston (+69,094), and Austin (+53,301) all saw substantial gains. It probably isn’t a coincidence that all these cities gaining population are in states controlled by Republicans who value low energy costs and low barriers to new growth. All the cities that saw big population losses are governed by Democrats, who value climate change and environmental protection over affordability.
The migration of families out of big blue cities to more affordable environments will only make those cities more uniformly Democratic. Those left behind are more likely to be renters, and
studies
have shown that renters are far more likely to vote for Democrats than for Republicans.
The trick for red states that want to stay red while taking on blue state refugees may just be doing everything they can to keep housing affordable. The more blue-state renters that red states can turn into red-state homeowners, the more Republican voters there will be to keep red states red.
New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco are all becoming playgrounds for wealthy old people and ambitious young people. They will always be nice places to visit (well, at least the parts they don’t let the homeless take over). But increasingly, they are not places for raising a family.
