Homeownership has always been a critical component of generational wealth in the U.S., and is therefore a critical variable in assessing racial and ethnic equity (or inequity, as is more often the case). Our latest snapshot does show a decline in homeownership rates over the past decade up to the beginning of the  pandemic. And we recently showed how difficult ownership can be for low and moderate-income households. Price run-ups are staggering and spatially shocking. This blog post takes a quick look at owner trends by race and ethnicity, starting with 2010 to 2019 trends in owner shares by group as shown on Chart 1 below. Almost 3 in 4 white households owned in 2010, more than 20 percentage points higher than any other racial or ethnic group shown on the chart. But between 2010 and 2019, homeownership fell among both Whites and Blacks at a similar pace, while rising significantly among other races (defined here as all races not White or Black and is predominantly made up of the Asian community) and the Hispanic/Latinx community. The increase was most pronounced for Hispanics, which in 2010 had the lowest homeownership rate by almost 10 percentage points, but by 2019 had a very slightly higher owner share than did the Black population.

Homeownership among the Hispanic population increased between 2010 and 2019 across almost all jurisdictions of the region as well. Chart 2 below shows that owner shares among Hispanics fell only in Cherokee, Rockdale, and Gwinnett Counties. Cherokee and Rockdale have small Hispanic populations. Gwinnett has a relatively larger portion of first-generation, newly immigrated Hispanics less likely to own than second and third generation households. Chart 3 finds that in most suburban counties the share of all owner households that are Hispanic grew between 2010 and 2019. The most notable positive trend is in Fulton, where Hispanics comprised 16 percent of all 2019 homeowners up from 10 percent in 2010. Conversely, Gwinnett County — the most diverse in ARC’s region — saw a four point decline in Hispanic homeowners, from a 35 percent share in 2010 to 31 percent in 2019.