More Renters May be Stuck

Reads the headline this week from Real Estate News, a publication from REALTOR.COM. The article was quoting from a New York Times piece which sated that homeownership is at an all-time low of 63.7% down from 69% in 2004. No surprise here as 2004 was the heyday of “go-go” loans, meaning that if you passed the mirror test you qualified for a mortgage, regardless of your bad credit, and that’s another story. On the other side of the low homeownership coin is the face of rising rentals. Did you know that since 2004 rental households (not rental units) have climbed 770,000 annually? Who are these renters, why they are our friends the millennials who are new to the job market, putting off starting a family, and who seem to be self-absorbed in spending money (on themselves of course). But joining them are a bunch of folks who got suckered into taking on a mortgage that they couldn’t afford, folks who are now approaching 50 years who in past times would have been solidly in place in a home that the own, but now have to rent because of poor credit. We do rent to these folks but only after verifying that they have good jobs with adequate income and after obtaining an additional security deposit.