According to research from the Building Societies Association (BSA), this proportion rises to 59% among renters aged 25-44.
Nearly a third of 25-44-year-olds think they will be able to buy a home in the next five years, and a similar number want to buy their own home but don’t think they will ever be able to do so.
The research found that the number of renters who do not want to buy a home has halved from 15% five years ago to around 8% currently.
The BSA said the research reinforces the findings of The Missing Millions report, which shows that around 7.2 million individuals or couples would have been expected to buy their first home since 2006.
However, only five million have achieved homeownership in this time, meaning there are 2.2 million missing first-time buyers from the property market.
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Looking at barriers to homeownership, 67% of prospective first-time buyers said raising a deposit was the biggest barrier.
Around 48% of potential first-time buyers said accessing large-enough mortgages was a hurdle and 26% pointed to the lack of job security.
Only 15% of people thought it was a good time to buy a property and 36% said it was not a good time to buy a home.
Around 86% of 18-24-year-olds want to get on the property ladder, and 28% believe they will do so in five years.
Approximately 19% don’t think they will be able to do so, a rise from 12% five years ago.
Paul Broadhead, head of mortgage and housing policy at the BSA, said: “Our studies into first-time buyers show that they face the toughest conditions in over 70 years. That comes into sharp focus when you see the statistics of the number of people in rented accommodation who have been unable to achieve their dream of homeownership in line with their life plan.
“It’s shocking that 2.2 million first-time buyers who would have reasonably expected to buy their own home have failed to do so since the financial crisis. And the research shows how quickly that number is growing – in 2020, only 12% of 18-24-year-olds felt homeownership was out of reach. Today, that figure has increased to 19%.”
He continued: “We can’t remove the barriers to homeownership overnight, and there won’t be a solution that enables everyone to get on the property ladder. But there is more that can, and must, be done, including regulatory flexibility and government focus on long-term solutions, such as increasing housing supply, rather than short-term demand-side boosts.
“Our first-time buyer reports provide several tangible actions that could be implemented to help fix the broken housing market, and in turn support today’s aspiring homebuyers, as well as [the] next generation. Every day that passes without real action raises the number of potential lifetime renters.”
