Rental Vacancies Stay Up, Homeownership Down

Vacancy rates for renters across the country remain low, and homeownership rates are hovering around 15-year lows, proving that potential homebuyers remain wary of investing in a market still scarred by the recession and plagued by slow growth and uncertainty.

Post-recession Americans are still wary of home ownership, it seems, as vacancy rates in rental and homeowner properties fell in the second quarter according to the latest U.S. Census report.

Vacancy rates for rental houses declined from 8.8 percent in 2012's first quarter to 8.6 in the second, according to Friday's report. The vacancy rate for rental houses in the second quarter of 2011 was 9.2 percent, and homeowner vacancies at the same time last year were 2.5 percent. This year the figure has fallen to 2.2 percent in the first quarter and 2.1 percent in the second quarter.

The rate of homeownership was nearly static ?EUR??,,????'??? up to 65.5 percent in the second quarter, from 65.4 in the first. The first quarter reading matched lows not seen since 1997, as the market has absorbed corrections since peaking at a homeownership level above 69 percent in the mid-2000s.