The percentage of households living in owner-occupied dwellings in Macau decreased by more than 6 percentage points in one decade.

The preliminary results of the 2011 Population Census, released yesterday by the Statistics and Census Services, indicates that 70.4 percent of the households are living in residential units they owned, down substantially by 6.1 percentage points in comparison with the previous census, conducted in 2001.

Meanwhile, one quarter of the households live in a rented home, up from less than 20 percent one decade ago.

The results show Macau had a total of 170,700 households in 2011, an increase of 26.5 percent in 10 years.