Rent or Buy? See How Woodland Hills Home Ownership Rates Compare

Proponents of home ownership argue that it ties people more closely to a community and makes people more invested in taking care of a neighborhood.  

There are many factors that determine how much of a community is made up of homeowners vs. renters - age of the community, income, whether a town is mostly single-family housing or multi-family housing. 

The Patch-created map above shows the percentage of the town's population that owns a home, based on figures from the 2010 census.  A full window view of the map is available here.

Woodland Hills, as part of the City of Los Angeles, is not singled out on the map, but a search of census figures shows that overal 66.1 percent of residents own their homes, a much higher rate than City of Los Angeles at 41.4 percent, and somewhat closer to neighboring Topanga's 79.6 ownership rate and the 77.1 percent rate in Calabasas.

The data in Woodland Hills is roughly divided by the zip codes north of the 101 freeway and the zip codes south - the north ones have a 60.1 percent ownership rate in total and the south ones, a 74 percent rate.

With the above map on left you can compare the different home ownership rates across L.A. County - the redder cities have the lowest rate, the greener the highest and the shades of orange and yellow are in between.

Do you think a high level of home ownership is important in a community?  Share your views with us in the comments section.