Home Ownership Rethinking Part of the American Dream

clipped from www.wallstreetjournal.com Rethinking Part of the American Dream To examine the eye-popping dimensions of the housing bust, New York Federal Reserve Bank economists calculate the fraction of families who actually have equity in the house they own. In San Diego, for instance, the home ownership rate had fallen to 55% last year from a peak of 63%. But by late last year, the fraction of households with equity in their homes was between 35% and 39%. In hard-hit Las Vegas, nearly 59% of households own their homes, but only 15% to 19% of households own a home in which they have any equity left. For many, the American dream of home ownership turned into a nightmare of debt and foreclosure. Some people should rent.