If you’re under 30, you can basically forget about owning your own home. At least that what a recent study from the Mortgage Bankers Association’s Research Institute for Housing America is telling us.

At the height of the homebuying boom, it was this under-30 set that grew the fastest when it came to buying a home. Ah, the good ol’ days of loose credit conditions and not being afraid to risk it all. Well, as if it weren’t already evident, you can kiss all of that goodbye.

It’s hard enough for someone with an established and well-paying career to get a loan these days, let alone a recent graduate who can’t get a job, has student loan debt that won’t be paid off for 30 years and has resorted to falling back on plan C – going to law school.

Homeownership rates for all age groups fell from an all-time high of 69.2 percent in 2004 to 66.4 percent in the first quarter of this year. Researchers expect that number to get even lower, but say that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. You see, that era of buying McMansions on a $50,000 annual salary was something people are referring to as an unsustainable lifestyle. Researchers think that once homeownership numbers fall even more they will reach historical averages – a place they should have been the whole time.

Right now, researchers are saying homeownership levels are around what they were in 2000, which they see as a good thing because then the rates are unlikely to fall any further if other patterns for that same time period follow suit. What other patterns? Stuff like socioeconomic and demographic traits of the population at that time. However, if those sorts of things begin to look more like they did 2009, well, expect homeownership rates to drop, again.

You can read the full report here.