Is The 1-Person Rental Unit Really The Most Popular?

In a popular real estate investors forum, I posted about the shift to the 1-person-household being the dominant household size.  

What did I get in response?...

One response.

"You're wrong." 

It basically went like this.  "You're wrong. First thing you need to do is get correct information. Married households account for 48.2% of households. Single person households account for 27.7%.". 

This was from an accomplished and respected investor.

He was missing it.  Listen carefully, or you'll miss it too....

------------------My response is below with question for you to follow-----------------

Hi @[Identity Hid]- I so appreciate the response- I love a man who knows their numbers! Even though you're right, I'll have to respectfully say you're wrong...in this case (hahaha), or we're both right :)

I guess it may have been foolish of me to make a statement that is prone to miscommunication. The term household can mean multiple things. I'll hit the top usages of the term "household" below, then clarify what I'm communicating.

• -US Census Bureau: people per financial unit
• -Insurance (General): person or pair of persons plus dependents
• -Real Estate (Rental) Investors: people per living unit.

This makes is easy to intercommunicate. I'm using the last usage above, as we are in a real estate investor forum. Rental investors are concerned with living units because that is who they rent to. It seems you are referring to US Census Bureau definition- and are spot on. There are many financial units (say a marriage) that are financially or legally united that do not live together OR they live together and additionally one or both maintains a second home in a different local for work/etc. This means a married household (aka "two-person-household") according to the US Census Bureau, may (from a real estate investor definition) count as two one-person-households and potentially not a two-person-household at all. This is further inflated when we focus on a real estate investor's concern, the population of those renting and exclude those who don't rent.

Harvard Reports the following on Renter Households:

1. - One-Person Households: 37% (living alone)
2. - Married Without Children Households: 16% (two person households)
3. - Family With Children Households: 33% (3 person plus related households)
4. - Other: 14%

I hope that helps remedy my previous oversight. I further ask your forgiveness for I posted a stat w/out sourcing it. I've corrected that :)

-----------------------Questions For You-----------------------------------

1) As a current or aspiring investors, how do we figure out if information is correct/incorrect or complete/incomplete? 

2) If getting in front of a trend makes you rich, how do you you know whether it's a trend or not?