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To the surprise of very few, the Denver Post reported last month that the average rent in metro Denver continues to rise. According to the Metro Denver Apartment Vacancy and Rent Survey,  the average rent during the second quarter of 2016 was $1,371, which was up from teh first quarter's average rent of 1,315. The second quarter rent marks a new all-time high: The increases in rental rates reflects ongoing low vacancy rates in the region. For the second quarter, the apartment vacancy rate in Metro Denver was 5.4 percent, which was down from the first quarter rate of 6.1 percent. During the second quarter 2015, the vacancy rate was 4.5 percent. Overall, we can see that, excluding a surge in vacancies during the fourth quarter of last year, the vacancy rate in metro Denver remains low, although not as low as what we frequently saw during the 1990s: As the economy has slowly expanded in the wake of the 2007-2009 recession, apartment vacancies have tightened, and reached esp...

Americans have long regarded owning a home to be largely synonymous with the so-called "American dream." High homeownership rates are not necessarily synonymous with a high-income prosperous society. Switzerland and Germany, for example , have homeownership rates well below that usually found in the US. Nevertheless, the US government has long made increasing homeownership an important policy goal, and this has led to a number of large and costly programs and institutions including Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, FHA, and a plethora of federal regulations surrounding mortgage lending and banking. Things haven't quite gone as planned. The most recent quarterly data from the Us Census Bureau shows that the homeownership rate in the United States has fallen to a 51-year low.  as of the second quarter of 2016. As of the second quarter of 2016, the homeownership rate in the United States was, according to the Bureau, 62.9 percent. That's exactly equal to the rate reco...