WINNING: Wave of Hispanic Buyers Shores Up U.S. Housing Market.

The homeownership rate for Hispanics has increased more during the past several years than any race or ethnic group, including whites. The rate, which hit a 50-year low in 2015, has risen 3.3 percentage points since then, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.

The overall U.S. homeownership rate bottomed in the second quarter of 2016 and has grown 1.3 percentage points since then. For blacks, the homeownership rate has fallen to its lowest level on record in the first quarter of this year. This marks the first time in more than two decades that Hispanics and blacks, the two largest racial or ethnic minorities in the U.S., are no longer following the same path when it comes to owning homes.

Minorities bore the brunt of the 2008 housing bust and their return to homeownership has been mixed. Now, a growing population of young Latinos increasingly eager to buy homes offers fresh hope to a slowing housing market, where sales of existing homes have fallen on an annual basis for the past year.

Black homeownership not only failed to recover from the Great Recession, but is still hurting for reasons no one has made clear.