A survey that mostly recorded stillness
The national rental vacancy rate stood at 7.3% in the second quarter of 2026, the homeowner vacancy rate at 1.2% and the homeownership rate at 65.0%, according to the Census Bureau's Quarterly Residential Vacancies and Homeownership release (CB26-116), published July 28.
Each of those figures sits within a step of where it was a year earlier: rental vacancy was 7.0% in the second quarter of 2025, homeowner vacancy 1.1%, and homeownership 65.0%. Against the first quarter of 2026, rental vacancy was unchanged at 7.3% and homeownership eased from 65.3%.
Census describes most of those year-over-year movements as not statistically different. The survey is a supplement to the Current Population Survey, meaning it is a household sample rather than a count, and quarter-to-quarter changes of a few tenths of a point routinely fall inside the sampling error.
Where the vacancy sits
The national rate conceals a wide spread by geography type. Rental vacancy ran at 8.0% inside principal cities, 6.9% in the suburbs and 5.8% outside metropolitan areas — a roughly two-point gap between the loosest and tightest market types.
By region, the South carried both the highest rental vacancy rate, at 9.5%, and the highest homeowner vacancy rate, at 1.5%. That is the region that absorbed the largest share of the 2024-2025 apartment delivery wave, and it is where newly completed buildings are still competing for tenants.
The Northeast was the only region where the year-over-year increase in rental vacancy was large enough for Census to call it statistically significant — a distinction worth holding onto, because it is the one regional movement in the release that the sample can actually support.
The one demographic that moved
Homeownership among householders under 35 fell to 35.2% from 36.4% a year earlier. It was the only age cohort whose change Census flagged as statistically significant, which makes it the most substantive single finding in an otherwise flat release.
Analysis: a 1.2 point drop in one year within one cohort is consistent with the affordability arithmetic reported elsewhere in 2026 — a 30-year fixed average near 7% against a median existing-home price at record levels, and a first-time buyer share at the low end of NAR's series. Younger households are the group whose entry decision is most sensitive to the monthly payment, because they hold no prior equity to carry across.
What the survey cannot say is whether those households are renting instead, doubling up, or staying with family. The homeownership rate counts who owns; it does not describe the alternative arrangement, and inferring one from the other would go beyond the data.
How to read a flat quarter
Occupied units accounted for roughly 89.5% of the total housing stock in the quarter, split 58.2% owner-occupied and 31.3% renter-occupied. Those proportions have moved slowly for years and are among the most stable series in US housing statistics.
One caveat carries forward through any trend line drawn across the past two years. The release footnotes that fourth-quarter 2025 data were based on incomplete collection following a federal funding lapse, so comparisons spanning that quarter rest on a weaker foundation than the rest of the series.
For readers, the practical takeaway is narrow but real: national rental availability is neither tightening nor loosening in a way this survey can detect, regional dispersion is doing the work, and the youngest potential owners lost ground over the year. The third-quarter release is due in late October.