After the turbulence of 2020, more millennials doubt they will ever be able to purchase a home. A new survey from Apartment List analyzing homeownership trends found that 18% of millennials expect to rent forever, up from 12% in 2019 and 11% in 2018. As a result, millennial homeownership is currently trailing previous generations.

Currently, at 47.9%, millennials have the lowest homeownership rates of any other generation. By comparison, gen-X's homeownership rate is 69%, while 77.8% of baby boomers and 78.8% of the silent generation owns their home. This data also reveals that homeownership has steadily declined through each generation.

In the last decade, millennial home ownership has increased more rapidly than any other generation; however, this is likely due to age differences between the generations rather than another trend as millennials are in prime home-buying age. Indeed, when the Apartment List data isolates homeownership among millennials, they still trend behind other generations. At age 30, only 42% of millennials own a home, compared to 48% of gen-X and 51% of baby boomers at the same age.