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Time was, renting an apartment \u2013 or maybe a house \u2013 was just a temporary arrangement until you saved up enough to buy your very own home. But for a growing number of today\u2019s renters, that scenario just doesn\u2019t appeal \u2013 and that trend has big implications for investors in rental real estate.

According to recent statistics reported by\xa0Business Insider, at the end of 2014, only 14.7 percent of tenants moving out of an apartment did so because they were buying a home. And in the years since the housing collapse of 2008, the percentage of renters moving out to buy a home of their own has stayed under 17 percent.

Those figures come at a time when the US homeownership rate overall is at its lowest point in over two decades \u2013 just 64 percent. And of those homeowners, only 29 percent are first time buyers \u2013 a group essential to the continued recovery of the housing market.

In the years since the housing crash, rental markets have surged even as home buying rates fall. To explain why, real estate professionals look once again to the millennials, those young people born between the mid 1980s to around 2000.

The average age of the first time homebuyer is around 30. In the traditional model of American adulthood, that would be the age at which a n individual has finished school, settled into a steady job, and is getting ready to marry and start a family. But in today\u2019s volatile economy, that model just isn\u2019t working for many new and recent college graduates.

Faced with student debt and an uncertain employment picture, many of these thirtysomethings fear being tied to the long-term commitment of a house. For many, job security is an issue. A recent college graduate may have to move across the country to start a career \u2013 or halfway around the world.

For others, debt and low income make getting a loan more difficult. Even though lending standards have loosened in an effort to encourage more new buyers, affording a down payment and convincing a bank that you\u2019re mortgage material can be difficult.

But that\u2019s assuming of course that there\u2019s a house to be bought. The inventory of available houses for purchase remains low in many markets around the country, and that shortage is especially acute for \u201cstarter\u201d homes that first time buyers can afford in areas they want to live in.

Established homeowners aren\u2019t selling those homes and moving up to more lavish residences. Many are watching home prices rise in hopes of selling at the house\u2019s peak value; others are enjoying good refinancing deals at low interest rates and don\u2019t want to risk a capital gains penalty for selling.

For all those reasons and others besides, today\u2019s renters just aren\u2019t moving out of rental housing to a house they\u2019ve bought. As Business Insider reports, a recent survey of reasons renters moved out of apartments found that the percentage of renters surveyed who did that peaked in 2004 \u2013 well before the housing crash of 2008.

Today, the numbers of renters leaving to buy a home continues to fall \u2013 lagging behind other reasons such as rent increases, job changes, and even evictions as reasons for leaving their current housing.

Most renters in the survey opted simply to move to another rental residence of some kind, either in the same or a different city. And those numbers don\u2019t appear likely to change any time soon \u2013 a trend that worries real estate market watchers who fear that the continued slowdown in homeownership, especially among those prized first time buyers, could stall the housing recovery and by extension the economy as a whole.

But the low homeownership numbers and the reasons behind them continue to feed a flourishing rental market, where rents continue to rise and even rental housing in desirable areas becomes scarce. And even though some renters opted to move just because rents were rising too high in their current rental, they chose another rental, not a house carrying a mortgage payment that might be lower than rent.

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In spite of the best efforts of the mortgage and housing industries to change them, the twin trends of low interest in home buying and the limited availability of homes to buy mean that renters will be renters \u2013 and for investors taking Jason Hartman\u2019s advice on building wealth in real estate, that means a rich pool of tenants for the long term.\xa0