Mortgage status
The share of owner-occupied homes that are held free and clear, with no mortgage or similar debt against them.
The share of owner-occupied homes carrying no mortgage debt.
The Census Bureau asks owners whether the home is encumbered, and classifies each owner-occupied unit as having "a mortgage, deed of trust, contract to purchase, or similar debt" or as being owned free and clear (ACS Subject Definitions). This measure is the count of units without such debt divided by all owner-occupied units in the same place and vintage. Renter-occupied and vacant units are outside both the numerator and the denominator.
The Bureau's mortgage-status table changed shape at the 2024-vintage renumbering used here: the item that had held the without-a-mortgage total in earlier years became a narrower home-equity-loan breakout, and the without-a-mortgage total moved to a new item of its own. Both items are read for every vintage and the correct one is used on each side of that boundary, so the series means the same thing before and after the change rather than silently swapping in a much smaller count.
Metrics in this family#
Considerations#
A high mortgage-free share usually means one of two things, and this number alone does not say which: owners who have held the home long enough to retire the loan, or owners who never borrowed against it. Both are signs of a settled owner base, but they carry different implications for how much of the stock is likely to come to market.
Mortgage status is about the debt, not about the owner's finances. An owner with a paid-off home can still be cost burdened by taxes, insurance and maintenance, which is what owner cost burden and monthly owner cost measure instead.
The denominator is owner-occupied units, so this share moves when the composition of owners changes and not only when loans are repaid. A tract that adds newly built homes bought with mortgages will show a falling mortgage-free share even if no existing owner's position changed.
The measure is published as a level only; no trend is computed for it.
ACS 5-year windows overlap, so each vintage shares four of its five years with the one before it and movement appears smoothed. In tracts with few owner-occupied units the estimate carries a wide margin of error. Census tract boundaries were redrawn for the 2020 census and earlier estimates are carried onto current boundaries before use — see geography.
References#
- 1ACS Subject Definitionshttps://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/acs/tech_docs/subject_definitions/2024_ACSSubjectDefinitions.pdf