The rental vacancy rate, meanwhile, fell 0.4 percentage points to 7.0 percent on a combination of tighter supply conditions and a rise in demand as homeownership looks like a distant dream for some Americans. In a survey last month, Freddie Mac found 61 percent of adults living in rental housing don't plan to purchase a home within the next three years as housing costs and credit challenges keep them on the sidelines.
Survey: 87 Percent of U.S. Homes are Occupied
About 87 percent of the 133 million total residential housing units in the U.S. in 2013 were reported to be occupied, according to the findings of the 2013 American Housing Survey (AHS) released earlier this week by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the U.S. Census Bureau.