Owner Costs, Selected Monthly
The sum of payments for real estate taxes, fire and hazard insurance, utilities, fuels, and mortgage. These data are tabulated for "specified owner-occupied" units, i.e., one-family houses on less than 10 acres without a commercial establishment or medical office on the property. The data exclude owner-occupied condominiums, mobile homes, and trailers.
Only selected monthly owner costs are included, since payments for maintenance and repair are excluded. Selected monthly owner costs are presented in tabulations comparable to those for gross rent since they are both measures of shelter costs) albeit for different universes.
The components of selected monthly owner costs are payments for the following items, all asked on a sample basis:
The total amount of all real estate taxes payable on the entire property (land and buildings) last year. It includes State, local, and all other real estate taxes even if delinquent, unpaid, or paid by someone outside the household. Taxes are reported even if included in the mortgage payment. Not covered are payments on delinquent taxes due from earlier years.
Fire and hazard insurance
The annual premium for fire and hazard insurance on the property; that is, policies which protect the property and its contents against loss due to damage by fire, lightning, winds, hail, explosion, etc. Liability policies are included only if they are paid with fire and hazard premiums and the amounts for fire and hazard cannot be separated. Premiums are included even if paid by someone outside the household or remain unpaid.
The regular monthly amount (both principal and interest) required by the lender on mortgages (including second or junior mortgages), deed of trust, or similar debt on the property; or payments on a contract to purchase the property. Amounts are included even if the payments are delinquent, or paid by someone else. The amount includes everything paid to the lender or lenders, regardless of what is included. Separate parts of the question determine whether taxes and insurance are included in the payment to the lender so that it is possible to avoid counting these components twice in the computation of monthly owner costs.
See the discussion under Energy Costs, Monthly Residential.
In the computation of selected monthly owner costs, annual figures for taxes, insurance, water and fuels (items where annual figures are usually more readily available than monthly figures) are divided by 12 to yield monthly figures.
Selected monthly owner costs are tabulated in a varying number of categories. Data are generally presented separately for units with a mortgage and units not mortgaged (i.e., owned free and clear) since the distribution of housing costs is quite different for the two groups. Basic record tapes preserve the dollar amounts for each of the component figures collected (e.g., mortgage payments, water payments). Public-use microdata samples also show dollar amounts, for components as well as tot31 selected monthly owner costs, although the amounts for real estate taxes and insurance premiums are combined into a single figure.
Selected Monthly Owner Costs As Percentage of Income
The ratio of selected monthly owner costs to household income in 1979) converted to percentage form. The data are tabulated for "specified owner occupied" units, i.e., one-family houses on less than 10 3cres without a commercial establishment or medical office on the property. The data exclude owner-occupied condominiums, mobile homes, and trailers.
Data are shown in terms of the number of housing units in categories such as "less than 20 percent," "20 to 24 percent," "25 to 34 percent," and "35 percent or more;" the data are generally cross classified by household income. Units occupied by households reporting no income or a net loss are included in the "not computed" category. This item was computed on a sample basis.
Limitations: Utility and fuel costs are frequently overestimated by respondents.
None of the components of selected monthly owner costs have been collected in previous censuses. (Utility and fuel costs were collected in 1970, but only for renters.)
