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More than a third of US households live in rental housing. After the Great Recession and housing market crash, the number of renters surged across all ages, races/ethnicities, and household types, with especially large increases among higher -income and older households. Nevertheless, younger, lower- income, and minority households are still the most likely to rent and thus make up large shares of renters. While growth in rental demand now appears to be slowing, demographic changes will continue to drive strong increases in the number of renter households over the coming decades. A DECADE OF SOARING DEMAND COMING TO AN END Rental housing demand has grown at an unprecedented pace for more than a decade. According to the Census Bureau's Housing Vacancy Survey, the number of renter households jumped by nearly a third, or roughly 10 million, between the homeownership peak in 2004 and 2016, From 2010 through 2016, growth has averaged 976,000 renters per year, far exceeding the 430,000-500,000 added annually in the 1970s and 1980s when the baby boomers started to enter the rental market. As of mid -2017, the number of US renters stood at 43 million. The surge in renter households erased a decade of declining demand between 1994 and 2004, when the national rentership rate fell from 36 percent to just 31 percent (Figure 7). The share of renter households was back up above 36 percent by early 2015, where it has stabilized now that fewer owners are losing their homes to foreclosure and more young households are buying first homes. As a result, rental markets generally are drawing less demand from homeowner markets. The latest survey data are beginning to reflect these trends. All of three annual Census Bureau household surveys reported slow- downs in renter growth in 2016. Indeed, the Housing Vacancy Survey showed a year -over -year decline in the number of renter households in mid -2017. But given that the trend is new and survey data are unprecise, the full extent and duration of the decline in rental demand are still unclear. Assuming that the homeownership rate does stabilize, renters should continue to account for roughly a third of household growth in the years ahead. THE SURGE IN HIGH-INCOME RENTERS Households of all ages, incomes, races/ethnicities, and family types helped to fuel the recent growth in renters, but the role of high- income households is particularly noteworthy. According to the Current Population Survey, households with real annual incomes of $50,000 or more—a group that accounted for just one-third of all renter households in 2006—drove well over half (60 percent) of the growth in renter households from 2006 to 2016. Moreover, house - 7