Many of the people I grew up with in the southwest own their homes (for the sake of this discussion, finance == own). Almost none of my friends in NYC own their

Many of the people I grew up with in the southwest own their homes (for the sake of this discussion, finance == own). Almost none of my friends in NYC own their homes. I recently moved out of NYC to a new england state and most of the people in my office own their homes. It's really not that uncommon for people outside of major cities to own their home?