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Los Angeles

California ranks No. 2 in nation on the renter-to-owner ratio scale

Half the homes in the state are occupied by tenants with a price premium for ownership

California; apartments; second place ribbon
(Getty)

The growth of renter-occupied units outpaces the growth of owner-occupied units in California, now the second highest state for renters.

In the Golden State, 45.5 percent of homes were occupied by renters in 2020, up from 44 percent in 2010, the Los Angeles Times reported, citing new figures from the U.S. Census Bureau. 

California was second to New York, where 49.7 percent of housing is renter occupied. Nationwide, 36.9 percent of homes are renter-occupied housing units, the highest figure since 1970.

The states with the lowest renter rates were West Virginia, at 27.4 percent, and Maine, at 28.9 percent.

The new data was “not shocking,” Hans Johnson, a demographer at the Public Policy Institute of California, told the Times. He attributed California’s high rate of renters mostly to “the high cost of housing.” 

The annual income needed to buy a home in Los Angeles rose last year to beyond $220,000, according to a study by Redfin.

With higher mortgage interest rates and inflation cutting into household earnings, the ability to own a home is increasingly out of reach for more residents in Los Angeles, where the median annual household income in 2020 was just over $65,000.

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Bay Area buyers pay by far the biggest premium for home ownership in the nation, with residents shouldering more than double the monthly costs to own versus renting a house, according to another Redfin report on the cost of home ownership compared to renting. 

Outside the Bay Area, a typical Anaheim mortgage was 91 percent higher than the typical rent for a house or condominium. In Los Angeles, the ownership premium was 79 percent.

The nationwide average was a 25 percent homeownership premium, the highest since the 2006 housing bubble.

High housing costs are also a factor in putting California near the bottom in another category: the rate of single-occupancy households.

New data from the Census Bureau show that more than a quarter of all households in America — 27.6 percent — had just one occupant in 2020. The rate of solo occupancy is more than three times the recorded level in 1940, 7.7 percent.

A Times analysis found that California ranked 49th of the 50 states in the rate of single-occupant dwellings, with 23 percent of households occupied by just one person, a rate that’s remained steady for two decades.

— Dana Bartholomew

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cost of housingRental homesRental Market