Homeownership and Prosperity

Richard Florida, writing for The Atlantic Cities, poses the question of homeownership correlated to economic health:

The economic growth and development of cities and regions is generally thought to be driven by three key factors: innovation, human capital, and productivity. Homeownership, it turns out, is not related to any of them.

It’s fascinating how despite the conventional wisdom, homeownership really isn’t linked to more prosperity regionally. Also, I was interested in the statistic that from 1890–1990 the rate of return after inflation for real estate was 0.