More Americans are moving in with roommates to save on rising rents and cost of living by sharing expenses, according to a latest Zillow report.
The report titled "Doubled-up for Dollars" sheds light on a new trend that has been catching up fast. Zillow explains the term doubled-up households as "one in which at least two working-age, unmarried or un-partnered adults live together."
"This definition captures the households that under different circumstances contain adults who could or would choose to live apart," the report states.
Zillow analyzed individual census survey responses and found that about 32 percent of working-age adults are now living in doubled-up homes. The numbers stood at 25 percent in 2000 and 26 percent in 1990.
The report also revealed that doubled-up households were more popular in expensive markets.
The Zillow report comes just a few weeks after a report by housing economist Thomas Lawler revealed that it's not just the adult children moving into their parents' house, but relatives and in-laws have also started living together.
Lawler's survey, which sourced data from the Census Bureau household formation report, found that the number of relatives and in-laws added to family homes in 2013 went up two-fold the recent average to 663,000. The number of non-relatives added to a household went up to 372,000 as well.
The year 2013 saw the formation of 164,000 new non-family households (friends, roommates) as compared to the 65,000 recorded between 2010 and 2012.
The lesser the number of family households, the lower will home sales go. More recently, the National Association of Realtors revealed that the number of existing home sales declined for the first time since May in August.
The association also stressed that construction on multi-family homes picked up showing that demand in the rental sector was still high. Experts added that until the employment and wages scenario of the country improved, the growth would remain choppy.
More recently, the Census Bureau said that the median household income in the United States rose only by 0.3 percent in 2013 after adjusting for inflation.
