Nearly 40% of U.S. homes are mortgage-free, census shows

Re:Nearly 40% of U.S. homes are mortgage-free, census shows by jsight on Tuesday December 12, 2023 @09:25AM (#38612468)

Interesting, given all of the articles about increasing consumer debt. I'd guess that a lot more people are motivated to do this, with mortgage rates fluctuating upward so quickly over the last couple of years.

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Re:Nearly 40% of U.S. homes are mortgage-free, census shows by IKantRead on Tuesday December 12, 2023 @09:49AM (#38612837)

As this other comment pointed out [0] 40% of homes are mortgage free, but that says nothing about home owners.

Anecdotally I know that none of my neighbors are mortgage free. However I also have a few friends that had major cash windfalls things like startup exits or time working in hedge funds, each of them owns 3-5 houses outright as investments.

So, with this small sample I can easily see that of the total number of homes owned by friends/neighbors, 40% being mortgage free sounds about right, but far less of my friends/neighbors are mortgage free.

0. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38612670

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Re:Nearly 40% of U.S. homes are mortgage-free, census shows by giantg2 on Tuesday December 12, 2023 @10:03AM (#38613036)

I agree overall, but the census should be measuring the primary residence of the respondent and exclude second houses or renters. Basically it's measuring households and not houses.

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Re:Nearly 40% of U.S. homes are mortgage-free, census shows by fred_is_fred on Tuesday December 12, 2023 @10:01AM (#38613008)

In fact the opposite is true. My mortgage is 2.125% and I have no motivation to pay that off because of rates spiking upward which gives me a better cash return than 2.125%.

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Re:Nearly 40% of U.S. homes are mortgage-free, census shows by ryandrake on Tuesday December 12, 2023 @01:17PM (#38616099)

If I could, I would pay off my 7.075% mortgage this minute. That's equivalent to a 7.075% guaranteed risk-free return, which I will not get on any other investment.

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Re:Nearly 40% of U.S. homes are mortgage-free, census shows by jsight on Tuesday December 12, 2023 @02:48PM (#38617381)

I think there's some of both. Plenty of people with low interest rates have little motivation for payoff.

But if you are moving right now for any reason, you aren't likely to be taking on more debt in the process. There's a pretty strong incentive to do what it takes to get debt to or near zero.

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Re:Nearly 40% of U.S. homes are mortgage-free, census shows by bart_spoon on Tuesday December 12, 2023 @09:33AM (#38612601)

Or it just could be more polarization between the haves and have nots in the economy. Fewer in the younger generations can afford housing than previous generations could at that age, so the pool of US homeowners is going to skew to the older, more financially established boomer generation who bought homes decades ago for much cheaper.

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Re:Nearly 40% of U.S. homes are mortgage-free, census shows by mrfox321 on Tuesday December 12, 2023 @09:35AM (#38612640)

This is my belief as well.

In California, the haves will have houses. The have nots will have ADUs.

Our world is structuring itself to (more) obviously reveal the wealth disparity.

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Re:Nearly 40% of U.S. homes are mortgage-free, census shows by oblio on Tuesday December 12, 2023 @09:34AM (#38612625)

Is there some sort of metric/data/graph for housing concentration? I'd imagine older people might have several properties if many of them bought a main residence, a summer home, etc, 30+ years ago when they were somewhat cheap.

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Re:Nearly 40% of U.S. homes are mortgage-free, census shows by dublinben on Tuesday December 12, 2023 @09:39AM (#38612703)

There’s a clear correlation between age and homeownership. The data is relatively stable over time though.

https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/data/charts/fig07.pdf

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