Minneapolis Fed says only 53% of Americans actually own homes

The Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis said only about 53% of American adults own the homes they live in, a measure that lands roughly 12 percentage points below the standard U.S. homeownership rate. The finding came in a July 15, 2026 article by Senior Economist Erik Hembre and Ben Horowitz, who said the conventional metric can overstate household security because it counts occupied housing units that are owner-occupied, not the share of adults who actually own their residence.

That gap matters because the long-running homeownership series used in federal data tracks a different question. The Census Bureau series in FRED, which dates to 1965, is built on occupied units rather than individual owners, and the Minneapolis Fed’s new measure shows how much the headline rate can obscure who is really building housing wealth. The usual national rate has sat around 65% to 65.8%, but the person-based calculation pushes the picture closer to one in two adults.

The age divide is starker still. The Minneapolis Fed analysis found that only 22% of adults under age 35 own homes, a figure that points to how sharply the market has pulled younger adults away from a key source of stability and asset growth. For households trying to move from renting into ownership, the difference is not just statistical. It affects who can accumulate equity, benefit from home price gains, and use a home as a financial buffer.

The bank’s earlier housing work adds context to the new measure. On July 30, 2024, the Minneapolis Fed reported that homeownership among the lowest-income households had climbed near an all-time high, outpacing gains among higher-income households. Even so, broader Federal Reserve research and other housing analysis continue to point to affordability, mortgage costs and supply constraints as central barriers in the national market.

Taken together, the figures suggest policymakers have been leaning on a rosier ownership picture than the adult-based data allow. A rate that counts homes rather than homeowners can blur the scale of generational and racial wealth gaps, since ownership remains one of the clearest routes to building assets and financial security. The new measure does not replace the Census series, but it shows why the old one may have been too generous in describing how many Americans truly own the place they call home.