U.S. households falls by 1.2 million between 2005 and 2008

04-18-2010 • MarketWatch.com/

More young people are living with their parents instead of moving out, postponing the creation of their own households. Meanwhile, more families are combining households for economic reasons, including the loss of a home due to foreclosure, according to Gary Painter, associate professor in the School of Policy, Planning and Development at USC. "With such a significant drop in households nationwide, it is clear the most recent recession impacted individuals' decisions to move out on their own and caused many Americans to join already formed households," Painter said in a news release Wednesday. The decline in the number of households contributed to the excess supply of apartments and single-family homes on the market. "The housing and mortgage industries will feel the impact of this reduction in the number of households for years to come," Painter said in the report, which was sponsored by the Mortgage Bankers Association's Research Institute for Housing America, a trust fund that aids research on mortgage markets and real estate finance.