A recent Tribune article calls attention to the recently-released 2009 American Housing Survey (AHS) data for the Chicago Metropolitan Area.
The AHS data doesn’t provide much data at the local level, but it does report a wealth of detail concerning the characteristics of Chicago-area housing.
The Trib article notes that, according to the AHS, 25% of homeowners own their property without a mortgage.
The rate of mortgage-free ownership is higher than average among the 65+ set (64%), blacks (33%), people living below the poverty level (46%), city of Chicago homeowners (34%) and suburban Cook County homeowners (30%).
In DuPage County, only 20% of owners are mortgage-free. Hispanics owned their homes mortgage-free at roughly half the rate of blacks, 17.7%.
Only 9.5% of homes built within the past 4 years were mortgage-free at the time of the survey. The mortgage-free ownership rate was at 2.4% for owners who had purchased within the previous year.