high prices for everything from groceries to gas aren’t the only things making this year feel like a throwback to the 1980s after almost a decade of gains homeownership in the us also has slipped back to levels seen about four decades ago see chart below when former federal reserve chairman paul volcker was waging a battle against high inflation that pushed the american economy into a recession fed chairman jerome powell repeatedly said he seeks to avoid sparking a recession while fighting inflation near a 40year high but also recently said that he can’t make any promises mizuho analysts pegged the plunge in homeownership to 654 in the first quarter of 2022 a drop from a recent peak of nearly 68 as part of their monthly report on economic data released tuesday for context they pegged the alltime low at 629 in 2016 a level that matched the lows of the mid1960s the slide in homeownership comes as a whitehot housing market has started to cool as the fed has begun to dramatically raise its policy rate and after many families raced to buy homes in the suburbs in the early months of the pandemic to better accommodate remote work the drop in homeownership a cornerstone to building generational wealth speaks to the affordability crisis gripping america in part due to the historically low levels of vacant homes about 11 million units on the market per mizuho data while the average for a 30year fixedrate mortgage rose above 5 in may for the first time in about a decade it remains far below the 16 to 17 peak rates of the early 1980s according to freddie mac fmcc data nationally the mortgage delinquency rate fell to a new low of 275 in may down from the longterm average of 431 for the same month according to black knight data released tuesday a key caveat of the current housing market has been the rise of institutional landlords in singlefamily rentals since the foreclosure crisis more than a decade ago a subject of recent discussions on capitol hill read institutional investors have bought hundreds of thousands of homes many in black communities critics say it’s creating a ‘generation of renters’ wall street has been providing institutional landlords with lowcost nonrecourse funding to buy up homes as rentals in recent years the us housing market also has dramatically changed in the past 40 years for families with the rise of the roughly 84 trillion mortgagebacked securities market becoming a key avenue of housing finance for borrowers the fed has become a major force in the sector through its large holding of these mortgage bonds with wall street watching closely as to how it navigates plans to dramatically reduce its footprint in a jittery market stocks spx mostly eked out gains tuesday a day ahead of the release of minutes from the fed’s last ratesettingcommittee meeting which together with friday’s jobs report will be monitored by investors the benchmark 10year treasury yield tmubmusd10y  used to price everything from consumer to corporate debt fell to 2808 down from a multiyear high of 3482 in june read the us won’t officially be in recession if gdp shrinks again and here’s why