> Homeownership rate over time has moved around within a fairly narrow range.
I don't think your graph says what you think it says.
The graph shows a time series of the rate of homes which are owner-occupied to those that aren't. When the average Joe buys a house, they tend to stick with it for life. However, the graph you linked clearly shows this rate plummeting from 2004 to 2016, with the nosedive amounting to around 6%.
This means that in a short span of a decade, the amount of home owners living in their own home dropped 10%.
You have a small spike around 2020 which I bet was caused by WFO allowing people to live in places cheap enough that they could finally afford their home, but that stagnated already.
Also, it's interesting how such a meteoric drop happens in an indicator that tracks home ownership, which is something people do for life. You need a very radical change in the people's ability to afford a house to see so many people stop affording them in such a quick timespan.
