A new report from rental site Apartment List confirms that Los Angeles is now a renter-majority city.

Once the epicenter of postwar, single-family housing, this patchwork of suburbs we call Los Angeles is now a denser region where homeowner families compose less than half the residential population.

“The home ownership rate in Los Angeles fell from 52.3 percent to 47.8 percent from 2007 to 2016,” said Apartment List data scientist Andrew Woo.

Since the Great Recession (officially 2007 to 2009), the home ownership rate of L.A.'s African-Americans suffered the most, seeing a 4.3 percent decrease, the report found.

At the same time, as Angelenos lost homes and shifted to apartments, rents increased 3.7 percent since 2007, Apartment List says. During the same time, homeowner costs, including mortgages and maintenance, fell 13 percent, the report says.

Don't cry for us, Angelenos. The recession hurt home ownership across the nation to some degree, according to the report. It notes, for example, that the American home ownership rate is at its lowest point since 1965. Demographically, Americans ages 18 to 45, Latinos and African-Americans were most affected by the shift from owning to renting, Apartment List says.

The national home ownership rate decrease for Latinos since 2007 is 4 percent; for African-Americans it's 5.5 percent, the report says.

“This phenomenon may exacerbate inequality in our society, as those wealthy enough to invest in real estate benefit from lower interest rates, whereas minorities and younger Americans, hit by rising rents and student debt, risk being locked out of home ownership,” the report states.

The analysis was based on data from the U.S. Census' American Community Survey, Apartment List says.
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