The Full Story of Why There Are Fewer Cost-Burdened Homeowners

The good news: fewer homeowners are cost-burdened compared to a decade ago. The bad news: the number of people who own their homes dropped in that time as high costs pushed potential homeowners into the rental market where almost half of renters spend more than 35% of their monthly income.

American homeowners aren’t feeling the pinch from housing costs like they used to — but that’s not necessarily reason to celebrate.

Only 20.9% of homeowners with a mortgage were cost-burdened as of 2018, meaning that they spent at least 35% of their monthly household income on housing costs, according to new data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey. That’s down from 28.8% a decade earlier, just as the financial crisis was reaching its fever point.

And the number of cities where a significant share of homeowners are cost-burdened has dwindled. In 2008, at least 40% of homeowners with a mortgage were burdened across 43 metro areas nationwide. Today, there are no cities where that’s the case.

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