Here's 4 reasons US home-ownership rates are so low

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U.S. home ownership has been languishing near its lowest level in about half a century after hitting a peak just before the financial crisis. And while there are few signs of an imminent rebound, it isn’t for lack of a desire to buy homes.

In the last quarter of 2004, before the housing bubble popped and the Great Recession reared its head, 69.2 percent of American homes were owner-occupied. But for roughly the last year, the homeownership rate has failed to crack 64 percent, and at one point rivaled a low last seen in the 1960s.

Low home ownership rates in the U.S. exist despite enthusiasm on the part of young, would-be home buyers. A survey of renters by government-sponsored mortgage purchaser Fannie Mae found that 91 percent of people between the ages of 25 and 34 do plan to buy a home someday.

“We looked at their attitudes about home ownership because we’ve seen reports in the media at times that suggest that maybe millennials don’t want to own quite so much now, after the [financial] crisis,” said Sarah Shahdad, a strategic planning analyst at Fannie Mae. “But a majority do say they would prefer to own—that owning does make more sense than renting.”

So what’s keeping home ownership rates low? Here are a few important factors, as explained by Patrick Simmons, a director in Fannie Mae’s economic and strategic research group.

1. Delays in life changes

Simmons said that young adults are increasingly delaying the types of life changes that often go hand-in-hand with home ownership, such as marriage and having kids. For men and women, the median age of marriage in 2015 was about 27 and 29, respectively—about two years older than the median ages for both genders in 2000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

“The fact that young adults are pushing life changes back to older ages helps explain some of the home ownership decline,” Simmons said.

2. High rent burdens

Since the housing bubble burst, demand for rental units has grown—and, that demand, in turn, has pushed rental prices up, straining household budgets, according to a 2015 report by Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies.

“As long as folks are facing very high rent burdens, it makes it difficult for them to save,” Simmons said. That difficultly saving can be particularly problematic as down payment requirements remain higher now than they were in the pre-crisis years.

3. High student-loan debt burdens

Attending college is an increasingly pricey proposition, and young people are borrowing more and more to afford it. In 2004, the average college graduate’s debt was $18,550 but, by 2014, that spiked to nearly $29,000, according to The Institute for College Access and Success. Paying high monthly student loan bills not only makes it difficult to save for a home down payment, it can also affect a would-be borrower’s chances of securing a mortgage since mortgage lenders consider an applicant’s debt-to-income ratios when judging mortgage applications.

“Mounting student loan debt makes it difficult to qualify for a mortgage if you want to become a homeowner,” Simmons said.