The share of renters who expect to move within three years has dropped roughly 20 percentage points over the past dozen years, according to a report published August 6 by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The decline reflects growing pessimism about ever being able to afford a home, the researchers found, with mortgage costs and perceived access emerging as critical barriers to both homeownership and residential mobility.
The average three-year probability of moving fell from about 57 percent in 2014 to roughly 37 percent in 2026 among renters, the report shows, drawing on data from the New York Fed's annual SCE Housing Survey. Homeowners experienced a smaller but still notable decline over the same span, with their mean moving likelihood dropping from around 21 percent to 14 percent. The downward trend accelerated following the pandemic for both groups. At the same time, renters' average perceived chance of ever owning a home plunged from approximately 52 percent in 2015 to about 35 percent by 2025, with an especially steep drop after 2021. The link between the two trends is stark: renters who give themselves only a 0–20 percent chance of ever owning report a mean three-year moving probability of about 25 percent, compared with roughly 76 percent among those nearly certain they will own—a gap exceeding 50 percentage points.
Renters increasingly view mortgage access as difficult and expensive, the authors write. The proportion who said obtaining a mortgage would be very difficult hovered near 27 percent in 2021 but climbed sharply to over 45 percent by 2024. The median mortgage rate renters expect to receive if they applied today more than doubled during the same window, rising from about 3.3 percent in 2021 to nearly 6.8 percent by 2024. Renters who anticipate high mortgage rates or describe access as very difficult report substantially lower expected mobility: those who say getting a mortgage would be very easy cite a mean three-year moving probability of about 66 percent, versus roughly 42 percent among those who say it would be very difficult.
The report finds that affordability constraints, rather than shifting preferences, explain renters' declining expectations. The share of renters who say they would prefer or strongly prefer to own a home if they had the financial resources has remained stable, fluctuating narrowly between 65 and 74 percent since 2015 and standing at about 65 percent in 2026. Similarly, the proportion who view homeownership as a good or very good investment has held in the 51 to 68 percent range over the same period. Because expected mobility predicts actual moving behavior, the decline offers an early warning that residential mobility—which helps households reach job opportunities, adapt to changing conditions, and improve their living situations—may continue to fall. Renters make up roughly a third of U.S. households and, unlike homeowners, aren't locked in by mortgage rates, making their reduced willingness to move all the more striking as a signal of affordability pressures reshaping the housing market.