White New Yorker’s homeownership rate is 66%, while the Black New Yorker’s homeownership rate is 35%, according to the National Association of Realtors 2022 Snapshot of Race and Home Buying in America report. To put that into perspective, the entire country’s homeownership rate enjoyed the largest annual increase on record (1.3%) in 2020 to 65.5%. More Americans are now likely to own a home since the great Recession.
The 1970 census found 42% of Black Americans owned their homes. Therefore, Black New Yorkers now own homes at a rate less than our grandparents did during the passage of the Fair Housing Act in 1968. That is the real smack in the face.
Nothing has changed this dynamic more than the bottom line… MONEY. Not laws, not programs, not violence, not protests, and not migration. Money, and access to it, is the primary driver of who owns a home in New York State. As of Feb 2022, the average single-family home was $790,000 in Westchester County NY, $575,000 in Rockland County NY, $450,000 in Putnam County NY, and $878,000 in our neighboring Fairfield County CT.
Since the pandemic, home prices have spiked 30%—or about $80,000 for an average home, while housing inventory has plummeted. Approximately half of all homes currently listed for sale (51%) are affordable to households with at least $100,000 income, and only 20% of Black households have incomes greater than $100,000.
According to the report 28% of renter households are severely cost-burdened—defined as spending more than 50% of monthly income on rent. “Black households not only spend a bigger portion of their income on rent, but they are also more likely to hold student debt and have higher balances,” said Jessica Lautz, NAR vice president of demographics and behavioral insights. “This makes it difficult for Black households to save for a down payment and as a result, they often use their 401(k) or retirement savings to enter homeownership.”
New York needs the laws and programs to incentivize and assist homeownership for Black Americans who were the victims of those laws and programs in the past. But more than anything else, we need to concentrate on the “BAG” as our children say. Generating wealth and access to capital is the only thing that will solve this problem. The only smack we need to worry about, is the palms coming together at the closing table.