CA: Low home ownership

A recent study shows that California near the bottom of home ownership rankings. Last year 57 percent of the state's residents owned their own home, the second-lowest total in the nation and 13.3 percentage points under the national average, said the analysis by the California Building Industry Association. Only New York had a lower ownership rate, 54.8 percent. Boosting the ownership rate to close to the nation's would boost property tax revenue by more than $4 billion a year, money that could help the state pay for infrastructure improvements, officials said. Ownership rates in most of California have been flat since the beginning of the decade, said Alan Nevin, the association's chief economist. At 47.4 percent, the Los Angeles metro area has the lowest homeownership rate in the state, down 1.5 percentage points since 1994. The highest rate, 67.2 percent, is in the Inland Empire. California has not been on a par with the nation in regard to homeownership since the 1960s, Nevin's analysis showed. For the rest of the story click here.