Latinx Homeownership Growing Fast; Coronavirus Causing 'She-Cession'

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Latinx Americans Are Driving US Homeownership Gains

Scars from the Great Recession have mostly healed, but household wealth and lending inequities are holding back Latinx home buyers

Remarkable growth this half-decade has boosted the share of Latinx households in the U.S. that own their home to its highest since the housing bust. While recent signs are encouraging, a new Zillow analysis reveals remaining roadblocks on the path to equitable housing.

Latinx Americans are a massive and diverse group, with more than 200 unique ancestries among the 60 million who live in the U.S., and their homeownership gains in recent years have far exceeded those of other groups. About 18% of the U.S. population identifies as Latinx, yet they have accounted for more than 60% of new U.S. homeowner gains over the past decade. That growth has brought the Latinx homeownership rate to 48.9%, the highest level since 2008.

This growth is even more striking when considered in the context of the housing bust during the Great Recession, when Latinx households took a disproportionately large blow. Less than 10% of all U.S. homes are in largely Latinx communities, yet 19.4% of all homes foreclosed upon between 2007 and 2015 were in these neighborhoods. After gains in the 1990s and early 2000s, this contributed to the Latinx homeownership rate falling to 44.1% in 2015—the lowest since 1998.

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Screen Shot 2020 10 12 at 7.36.10 PM — *Source: American Community Survey, 2014-2018

Women More Likely to Face Housing Insecurity in Pandemic-Led Recession

Dubbed the ‘she-cession,’ women face disproportionate housing impacts due to unemployment, housing tenure, and child care

The pandemic-led recession is disproportionately hurting women in the workforce and is more likely to threaten their housing security. A new Zillow analysis finds women are more likely than men to be unemployed, renters, and caregivers during the coronavirus pandemic, thereby increasing their risk of becoming severely cost-burdened by housing.

The pandemic has been a startling setback for women who had been narrowing the gender gap in recent years. At the beginning of the year, more women than ever before were in the workforce, incomes were rising along with the home values of women-headed households. The COVID-19 pandemic has not only interrupted this period of growth but may have pushed women backward in housing and employment by impacting their participation in the workforce and their potential earnings well into the future.

“She-cession” was a term coined to describe the disparate impacts this pandemic’s recession is having on women after the 2008 financial crisis was dubbed the “mancession” for the ways in which men were more severely impacted by Wall Street’s collapse. However, the similarities end with the moniker. Zillow’s analysis finds that year-over-year unemployment claims are 10 times higher for women during this pandemic than what men experienced in the Great Recession.

Women are more likely to work in service-sector industries, which are the most affected by the pandemic, and are feeling the effects of unemployment much more severely. In May, unemployment claims for women were up 1,368% year over year. At the peak of the Great Recession in 2009, unemployment claims for men were up 137% year over year. At the peak of the COVID-19-driven recession in May, unemployment claims for men were up 983% year over year, a record high, but still significantly less than the spike women experienced. Black and Latinx women are faring even worse, with persistent double-digit unemployment rates as reported by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

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6.5% More Americans Looked to Relocate to Red & Swing Counties Than to Blue Counties in the Spring

Migration to Arizona could play a part in flipping the swing state blue in this year’s presidential election

More people moved from blue (Democratic) to red (Republican) counties than from red to blue counties in the spring, according to a new report from Redfin. Specifically, 6.5% more people looked to move to red and swing counties than to blue counties in the second quarter. Meanwhile, 3.2% more people looked to move to swing counties than blue or red counties, and 1.2% more people looked to move to red counties than blue or swing counties. This analysis reflects Redfin.com home searches from users who looked to relocate to a different county.

The trend is more pronounced in a collection of 13 swing states, where 9.3% more people looked to move to red and swing counties than blue counties, and 1.8% more people looked to move to red counties than blue or swing counties. In swing states, 3.6% more people looked to move to swing counties than red or blue counties.

The time period Redfin examined encompasses the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic and the shift toward remote work, which has resulted in some homebuyers deprioritizing commute times and relocating from expensive cities that lean blue to rural and suburban areas that tend to vote more red—which tend to lean red or purple—where they can find more space for less money. And according to Redfin.com user search data, a record 27.4% of home searchers looked to move to a different metro area in the second quarter, many of them away from California and New York and into states like Arizona, Texas, Florida, and North Carolina that lean red or purple.

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Note By BiggerPockets: These are opinions written by the author and do not necessarily represent the opinions of BiggerPockets.