Most renters want to be homeowners — but they don't think they'll ever afford it

Owning a home is becoming an increasingly distant dream for many Americans, as the housing market continues to feel prohibitively expensive for most.

Eighty-six percent of renters in the United States are itching to buy a home, but say they can’t afford it, according to a new CNN poll carried out by SSRS published Monday. Within this group of renters, more than half (54%) feel they might never be able to.

Split up by age, younger renters are a little more optimistic about their prospect of ever owning a home. While 53% of renters younger than 45 believe it’s at least somewhat likely they’ll eventually be able to buy a home, just 32% of those age 45 and above said the same, CNN found.

Housing affordability has become one of the biggest burdens on Americans in the years since the start of the pandemic. A combination of high home prices and mortgage rates, paired with low housing inventory, have put significant pressure on potential home buyers. The median home sale price reached a record $442,525 in June, with the average rate on a 30-year mortgage coming in at 6.92% — roughly double pandemic lockdown-era lows.

Across the U.S., many prospective first-time buyers feel priced out of the market. A typical “starter home” costs $1 million or more in a whopping 237 U.S. cities, according to a recent report by real estate site Zillow. That’s nearly triple the number of cities where that was the case in 2019.

And renters are especially feeling the financial pain, with a majority worried about the long-term effects of rising rental costs. The average rent in the U.S. is $1,536 per month (a 0.8% year-over-year increase). Given these costs, a record-low percentage of renters believe they’ll ever own a home, a recent New York Federal Reserve survey found. The national homeownership rate is about 66% as of April 30, according to the latest data from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.