How Old Are Montana Homeowners? Concerning Trend Emerging

A viral story about sports betting points to a potentially concerning trend in the housing market.

The CNBC interview with Meridith Whitney of the Meridith Whitney Advisory Group discussed the increase in sports betting and how it affects the life choices of young men.

At the tail end of the interview, Whitney shared some shocking statistics about who owns housing in America.

"74% of the housing stock is owned by people over 50. 90% of the housing stock is owned by people over 40."

For a while now, memes and videos on social media have all poked fun at (or soberly pointed out) the difference between what adults in the early 2020s could afford versus what their parents could afford.

While these are national trends and statistics, I was curious how this affected Montana, specifically. Montana has seen unprecedented growth within the same period as the information described in the video above, and there's no question that the housing market has changed drastically since 2020.

I found a second source that identified housing information for Montana. The Urban Institute has compiled information about homeownership in Montana with projections for the future on homeownership rates by age. Take a look:

Montana Homeownership Rates, by Age

	1990	2000	2010	2020	2030	2040
Younger than 65	64.1%	66.3%	64.8%	35.3%	34.7%	36.7%
65 and older	77.0%	79.0%	78.1%	NA	NA	NA

National Homeownership Rates, by Age

	1990	2000	2010	2020	2030	2040
Younger than 65	62.3%	63.0%	61.6%	59.5%	57.5%	56.5%
65 and older	75.8%	78.1%	77.5%	78.4%	76.0%	73.0%

Sources: Decennial censuses, the American Community Survey, and Urban Institute projections.
Note: Values for 2020, 2030, and 2040 are projected values.

(Table via Urban Institute)

Even considering that these are projections, it still appears to be a concerning trend that the percentage of homeowners younger than 65 is basically cut in half in a ten-year period. Usually, compiling this kind of data can take years which is possibly why they only have projections for 2020. We may see solid data in the next few years.

But based on the interview above with Meredith Whitney, who references data from Pew Research Center, though these are two separate sources, it appears Montana's data is similar to the rest of the country.

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Gallery Credit: Stacker

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Filed Under: Missoula Real Estate, Montana, montana-real-estate, social post

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