Homeownership in Erie County, PA

Home Ownership

Analysis Categories

What does this measure?

Homeowners by Age Range, Move In Date, Education Level, and Race/Ethnicity as of 2018, by ZIP code.

Why is this important?

The home ownership market is an important way to gauge the momentum of a place, and know where demographics are concentrated. Tenure in one place, regardless of home ownership or renting, is an important corollary to quality of life. A higher rate of rentals over homeownership can also indicate the momentum of a neighborhood, or institution in the area.

How is Erie County doing?

Age

Home ownership exhibits a Bell curve among age groupings from 35 to 75, with 55- to 64-year-olds showing the highest ownership rates at 23.9%. Home rental is majority (34.3%) among those aged 35 or less, up from 30.6% in 2018, and falls with each subsequent age grouping.

Move-In Date

A quarter of all homeowners (25.3%) and nearly a fifth of all renters (21.6%) have remained in the same zip code since moving in between 2000 to 2009. The majority of homeowners (26.6%) moved into their current residence in 1989 or earlier, whereas the majority of renters (27.7%) moved into their current rental between 2010 to 2014.

Educational Attainment

The majority of Erie's home owners and renter's highest educational attainment is a high school diploma or equivalent, where differences lie is in home ownership of Bachelor's degree holders or higher at 23.8% compared to renters of the same educational attainment at 16.6%. Conversely, Erie County residents with less than a high school education represent only 8.6% of all home owners and 14.6% of renters.

Race

Due to the racial breakdown of Erie County, the majority of both home owners and renters are White, within that category 96.8% of home owners are White, while 91.8% of renters are White. This difference is made up for Black residents, wherein they represent 1.9% of home owners, but 5.1% of renters. Concerning other persons of color, this pattern remains the same, with the percentage of renters of color always being higher their representation amongst home owners.

EVS Indicators

EVS analyzes the data in each topic category using indicators, which report a targeted and digestible number, rate, or amount to represent Erie County as a whole. While this does not cover every aspect of the topic, it assists in establishing Erie's performance relative to the prior year(s). The indicators for the Community: Home Ownership topic are:

  

  

This indicator measures the percentage of all occupied housing units (not vacant) that are owner-occupied (not rented). The trend for Home Ownership was up and better in 2019, rising by +0.3% within the County. A home is a vital financial asset for a family and an investment for both the local neighborhood and surrounding community, and as such this decrease represents negative growth.

How does Erie compare to its Peers?


How does Erie compare to Pennsylvania?

About this Data

Data from the U.S. Census ACS as of 12/2020.