J: One of the more depressing trends of the last decade was the seemingly endless decline in the national homeownership rate. As the chart shows, it peaked in the second quarter of 2004 at 69.4 percent seasonally adjusted. The February 28 release from the Census Bureau proves conclusively that we are now well past the bottom. We hit 64.6 percent in the fourth quarter of 2018. That is the highest since the 64.8 percent in the first quarter of 2014. It is just below the se