03/24/2026
Perhaps surprisingly, it wasn’t until after World War II that a majority of American households owned their homes. According to analysis done by the U.S. Census Bureau and the Federal Reserve, the rate of homeownership in the U.S. in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was between 44 and 48 percent, with homeownership being much more likely in rural areas than in cities. In 1940 the rate of home ownership in the U.S. was 44 percent.
In the early days of the country, rural people built their own homes on the land they farmed. While that wasn’t easy, of course, acquiring a home was even more challenging for working class city dwellers. Home mortgages weren’t available until the 1860s and as late as the early 1900’s typically required a 50 percent down payment, with the entire principal balance due at the end of five years. Obviously such terms made it difficult for people to finance the purchase of homes.
Things changed dramatically after World War II ended. The GI Bill subsidized mortgages for veterans and resulted in a boom of homeownership, aided by the emergence of a home mortgage industry that offered longer term loans and more affordable payments. Nearly 2.4 million American veterans bought their first homes using federally guaranteed home loans under the GI Bill, which required little or no down payment. Meanwhile an evolving economy and the widespread ownership of automobiles led to the rise of suburbs, with more affordable houses, as city workers no longer had to live within walking distance of their factory jobs.
The most recent reported home ownership rate in the United States is 65.6%. The rate has fluctuated between 62 and 69% for the past 60 years.
The photo, from 1950, shows a family standing in front of their new home in Levittown, New York, the first suburb of mass-produced homes in America.
Over the past seventy years, not only has homeownership increased, but the size of homes has as well. Over the past 40 years, even as the size of families has decreased, the average size of American homes has nearly doubled—but the evolution of home size is a Dose for another day.
