I think there is some truth to that. I'm a landlord and have never seen the rental market this hot as I have the last five years or so. Not many people are interested in owning a home today. It's kind of like a new trend.
The last apartment I advertised was exactly three years ago. Usually in the winter, you get very few replies because most people move in the spring. However that time, I had over a dozen in my mail the next day; some of them saying they will take the place sight unseen.
In California, they were proposing a rent limit because landlords were taking so much advantage of the market. Unlike when I was younger, the American dream is no longer owning your own house. It's renting now.
I think today's society is more mobile, people are no longer living in the same town their whole lives and working for the same company. One of the things that slowed the recovery from the last election was that people could not go to where the jobs were as they were upside down on their houses and did not want to just walk away. People want the freedom and flexibility to go where they are lead to go or where their job leads them.
That may be part of it, but I really think the younger generations don't want to deal with the problems. My employer has a small business magazine he subscribes to, and they had an article there about millennials and Gen-X people. Many of them lease their cars instead of buying them. They rent their furniture and appliances. They just don't want to deal with the problems of home ownership. They don't want to have to cut lawns, remove snow, fix a toilet, nothing. It's just so much easier to make a phone call to solve any problem you have.
