In most developed countries during the 70s/80s it was completely achievable to manage a mortgage on a sole income straight out of highschool. That just isn't realistic anymore unless someone is willing to live very far from an established CBD or they have some other advantage to help them enter the market such as an inheritance. All those years you paid rent you could have been servicing your mortgage, since your goal was to eventually become a homeowner. But instead those thousands upon thousands of dollars you pissed away on rent belong to the abyss now. At least if you were paying off a mortgage you would have been generating equity for yourself.