Census data from the American Community Survey also puts current Millennial homeownership higher than the Baby Boomer generation at the same stage. ''While 900,000 households in the Millennial Generation [now] own their own home, only 500,000 Baby Boomer households owned their own homes at the same point in their lives,'' said Glenn Crenlin, spokesman for the Runstad Center for Real Estate Studies at the University of Washington. Crenlin told NewGeography.com that ''the Millennial Generation is likely only delay[ing] homeownership by three to five years, [which is] not a long-term trend away from homeownership itself.''

The recent consensus surrounding the generational preference of renting over home ownership can be traced to faulty trend analysis, beginning with the use of the late-1990s housing boom as a baseline. For example, recent Census Bureau data places the home ownership rate in the first quarter of 2012 at 65.4 percent, the lowest rate since 1997 and a cause for much hand-wringing by industry experts. Before the bubble, however, homeownership generally remained at 65 percent or below, increasing strongly from 44 percent in 1940 to 61 percent in 1960.