NEW YORK — Ongoing economic, financial and housing woes continue to hit Americans where they live — or used to.

A perfect storm of job losses, unaffordable mortgages and plunging home prices have resulted in a steady decline in homeownership over the past five years, according to the results of a U.S. Census Bureau report.

Nearly 3 million fewer Americans now own homes compared to the first quarter of 2005, when homeownership peaked at 69.1%, the Census Bureau found. During the third quarter of 2010, the homeownership rate was down to 66.9%, unchanged from a quarter earlier. That’s the lowest rate since the second quarter of 1999.

Meanwhile, a great number of homes sit empty. For owner-occupied homes, the vacancy rate remains at 2.5%, the same as in the second quarter, but well up from the sub-2% levels seen mid-decade.

For rental properties, the vacancy rate actually dropped in the third quarter, to 10.3% from 10.6% three months earlier. But that’s still up from the 9.9% rate of 24 months ago.

‘There’s a big inventory glut out there and it’s probably worse than reported,’ said Pat Newport, an analyst with IHS Global Insight. ‘The data is muddled because they don’t account for foreclosures not […]