What Is National Homeownership Month?

Did you know there’s an entire month that honors homeownership in the U.S.? Many decades ago, June was dedicated to promoting home ownership, highlighting how deeply owning a home is valued in American culture. Dubbed National Homeownership Month, the yearly tradition might resonate with your own journey toward owning a home. But what is National Homeownership Month, exactly?

Whether you’ve already bought a home or aspire to in the future, the deep longing to find the perfect house in a welcoming community is something we can all relate to. Achieving homeownership has long been considered a foundational part of the American Dream.

Let’s take a closer look at what goes into National Homeownership Month and all that it signifies. While we recognize the celebratory side of this month-long event, we’d be remiss to neglect the stark reality that homeownership in America has never been (and still is not) an equal opportunity for all Americans.

For that reason, we also examine the racial and economic disparities in homeownership in America, which must be acknowledged alongside progress made.

What is National Homeownership Month?

In a nutshell, National Homeownership Month is a time to celebrate the ways that homeownership benefits individuals, families, and communities in America.

Although it’s gone through many iterations over the years, the tradition first began during the economic boom of the Roaring Twenties following the end of World War I, when there was a sudden burst of societal growth and optimism. People embraced peacetime and had enough wealth to buy property and settle down with their families.

The tide of events quickly changed, as it would continue to do throughout the 20th century and into the present. However, the notion of setting aside time to acknowledge a shared vision for success persisted. Here’s how the tradition evolved:

• 1920: Local Realtor groups wanting to promote the idea of homeownership create the first week-long celebration.
• 1956: The National Association of Realtors (NAR) memorializes the celebration on a nationwide scale, thereby incorporating it into the ethos of the American Dream.
• 1976: U.S. Congress issues a joint resolution designating the week beginning on April 18 as Private Property Week, renaming the tradition.
• 1986: The celebration was then renamed again, this time as American Home Week.
• 1995: National Homeownership Week was established by the Clinton administration to increase homeownership rates.
• 2002: President George W. Bush expands the observance to the entire month of June.
• 2016: The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) uses the celebration to highlight the agency’s role in helping people buy homes in rural areas.
• 2021: With the backdrop of economic pain brought on by the coronavirus pandemic, President Joe Biden vows to expand stability and equal opportunity in the housing market.
• 2022: HUD initially called 2022 a year of momentum for the nation’s homebuyers, but the 30-year fixed mortgage rate jumped from 3.11% in January to a high of 7.08% in November.
• 2023: A historic number of affordable multifamily units were under construction. The Biden administration proposed including $175 billion in housing investments in the federal budget.
• 2024: Persistently high mortgage rates and limited inventory pushed home prices higher, keeping affordability out of reach for many buyers. Housing policy became a major topic in the presidential election, with both parties proposing plans to address affordability and increase housing supply.
• 2025: Housing affordability remained a major challenge as home prices, mortgage rates, insurance costs, and property taxes continued to strain household budgets. The Trump administration emphasized policies aimed at reducing housing costs and increasing affordability for American homebuyers.
• 2026: Affordability remains a key concern for buyers, though housing inventory is improving in many markets. National Homeownership Month highlighted efforts to expand access to homeownership through down payment assistance programs, financing options, and increased housing supply.

Here are some examples of groups that facilitate homeownership:

• U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
• Federal Housing Administration (FHA)
• Housing assistance programs
• Financial and housing counselors
• National Association of Realtors®
• Licensed real estate agents
• Home builders and contractors
• Mortgage lenders and title companies
• U.S. Department of Agriculture
• State and local government housing agencies
• Nonprofits that offer first-time homebuying classes
• Real estate listing platforms
• Lumber and steel suppliers
• Modular home factories

Why does homeownership matter?

Homeownership carries both cultural and financial weight in U.S. society. So much so that the concept of the American Dream has become closely associated with homeownership, even if it wasn’t originally intended to be synonymous.

For these reasons, homeownership has, in a way, become a rite of passage between young adulthood and full-fledged adulthood, as it often coincides with finding employment, finishing higher education, and investing hard-earned savings.

For some, it’s timed closely to marriage and starting a family. Others buy homes with parents, friends, other relatives, a partner, or as individual owners. Single individuals are strong participants in the real estate market today. Homeownership tends to be evocative of settling down in a place and growing roots in a community.

How has homeownership changed over the years?

The following chart illustrates how homeownership rates have ticked up slightly over the decades, even as the price barrier to ownership has steadily risen.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, National Association of Realtors

One primary reason rates have increased despite soaring costs is that the mortgage process was changed to allow people to borrow more money to afford homeownership.

Although the concept of mortgages has existed for decades, it wasn’t until after the Great Depression that the process became consumer-focused. As part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, the FHA was created, which, among other things, created the 30-year mortgage standard.

In March 2023, the FHA announced its final rule that allows lenders to extend mortgage repayment schedules to 480 months (40 years) for distressed homeowners through a loan modification program.

Housing discrimination plagues the American Dream

For many Americans, the American Dream of homeownership was deliberately derailed or placed beyond their reach through generations of racist policies and practices inflicted against them since the days of slavery and beyond. The government, real estate agents, landlords, and financial institutions systematically discriminated against black homeowners and other minorities through unethical practices such as “steering” and “redlining,” among others.

What is steering in real estate?

Steering is when a real estate agent, landlord, landowner, or anyone in the industry pressures or influences a homebuyer to purchase property in certain communities — or “steers” them away from certain communities — based on their race, color, religion, sex (including gender identity and sexual orientation), disability, familial status, or national origin.

Here are a few examples of ways steering might look:

• An agent refuses to show qualified candidates listings in certain neighborhoods
• An agent shows more listings to white buyers and limits options for minority buyers
• An agent dissuades white clients from purchasing a home in minority communities
• An agent assumes their buyer would not want to live among people of a different race
• An agent only shows clients homes in neighborhoods where the agent thinks they “fit in”
• An agent speaks disparagingly about a neighborhood of a certain race or religion
• An agent brings up crime concerns to white homebuyers, but not to minority buyers

Steering caused horrific racial disparities for minorities over many years, especially Black Americans, who were equally qualified but guided away from desirable neighborhoods and into disadvantaged neighborhoods with higher poverty levels and homes with less appreciation and lower home values.

While steering was made illegal under the 1968 Fair Housing Act, the practice has not been fully erased in the U.S.

What is redlining?

The Federal Reserve defines redlining as “the practice of denying a creditworthy applicant a loan for housing in a certain neighborhood even though the applicant may otherwise be eligible for the loan.”

The term is derived from the practice of mortgage lenders drawing red lines — figuratively or literally — around portions of a map to mark neighborhoods or areas where they would reject approval of home loans based on race or ethnicity.

Redlining was especially repressive and destructive for people of color who were denied the opportunity to build a better life for themselves and their families through homeownership.

The practice, which is now illegal, created egregious racial disparities in employment, education, health, and wealth, especially for Black families.

Racially restrictive covenants in deeds also kept Black families from moving out of redlined neighborhoods. Even Black soldiers returning from serving in World War II were rejected by lenders.

In addition, the urban renewal policies in the 1950s allowed the government to strip underprivileged families of their property to build federally funded highways, civic centers, and office buildings. The homes and businesses of many Black families were seized and torn down, forcing many of them to start over.

Damage to the dream continues

Additional restrictions worked against Black families and other people of color, exacerbating racial inequities in housing. Some of these included:

• Racially crafted zoning laws segregating by wealth, income, or through lot or home sizes
• Governments prohibiting low-cost housing options where they were needed
• Predatory mortgages and refinancing programs targeting people of color