Renting vs Buying: Why Millennials Prefer to Rent Instead of Own

There's a question previous generations almost never asked before a purchase: "Do I actually need to own this?" For people born between the early '80s and the mid '90s — millennials — that question has become close to automatic. And for Gen Z, coming up right behind them, it's usually the starting point.

A power drill, a camping tent, a mirrorless camera, a pair of skis, a projector for a birthday party: items we use a handful of days per year, and which for decades we bought out of habit. Today a growing share of people under 45 take a different route: rent it when you need it, from someone nearby who already owns it. In this article we look at the numbers and the reasons — economic, practical and cultural — behind this shift in mindset, and what it means for anyone with idle items sitting at home.

The context: a generation raised on access

Millennials are the first adult generation that grew up entirely inside the access economy. They don't buy CDs: they have Spotify. They don't buy DVDs: they stream. In cities, many don't even buy a car: they use car sharing. The idea that you can use without owning isn't a novelty that needs explaining — it's the default setting.

Extending that logic from digital subscriptions to physical items is the natural next step, and it's already happening. The European sharing economy has grown steadily for a decade, and peer-to-peer rental — the kind where there's no company with a warehouse, just a person with a drill gathering dust in the basement — is the fastest-growing segment, precisely because it requires no investment: the items already exist.

That figure is the heart of the whole story. The average household drill gets used for just a few minutes over its entire lifetime. A camping tent leaves its bag once or twice a year. A €2,000 camera works three weekends out of fifty-two. For most items, ownership mostly means paying to keep things idle.

The 4 economic reasons (which come before everything else)

1. Less stable incomes, more cautious spending

Millennials entered the job market between one crisis and the next: 2008, then the pandemic, then inflation. More flexible contracts and less linear careers make big purchases feel less automatic. Spending €400 on something you'll use five times isn't prudent — renting it for €15 a day is.

2. The true cost of ownership is higher than the price tag

The purchase price is only the beginning. Owning also means maintenance, accessories, depreciation and — in cities — the cost of space. In a city-centre flat, every square metre occupied by stuff you don't use has a literal rental value. A packed basement isn't just clutter: it's frozen money.

3. You rent quality, you buy mediocrity

People who buy an item they'll rarely use tend to buy the budget model. People who rent can afford the best one: the carbon road bike instead of the aluminium one, the full-frame mirrorless instead of the compact. Renting democratises access to the premium tier — and for a generation used to high standards, that's a powerful lever.

4. Your own items become an income

The coin has two sides. The same millennials who rent are also the ones renting out: the camera that works three weekends a year can generate a monthly side income in the other forty-nine. The line between consumer and micro-entrepreneur has never been thinner.

The cultural reasons: ownership is no longer a status symbol

For boomers, and partly for Gen X, owning things signalled status: the car in the garage, the drill in the basement, the ski gear in the wardrobe told people who you were. For millennials, status has moved elsewhere: experiences matter more than objects. The kayaking weekend is worth more than the kayak.

Add to this environmental awareness, which for people under 45 isn't a niche concern but a purchasing criterion. Every item shared among ten people is one item manufactured instead of ten: fewer raw materials, less shipping, less waste. We covered this in depth in our piece on the circular economy and peer-to-peer rental — here it's enough to say that for many borrowers sustainability isn't the main reason, but it's the reason that removes the last doubts.

Renting vs buying: the practical comparison

Let's compare the two approaches on typical items, assuming realistic usage for someone who isn't a hardcore enthusiast:

For occasional use, renting costs between one tenth and one third of buying in the first year alone — before counting depreciation, maintenance and storage space. Buying remains the right call for items you use genuinely often. The point isn't "never buy again": it's buy what you actually use, rent everything else.

The most common objections (and why they don't hold up)

"But what if I need it suddenly?" For genuinely urgent items — the drill when a shelf comes off the wall — the answer is proximity: on a peer-to-peer platform the nearest lender is often minutes away, not a day of shipping. "What about hygiene, or the item's condition?" That's what two-way reviews and listing photos are for: an item rented twenty times with twenty positive reviews offers more reassurance than a blind second-hand purchase. "In the end I'll spend more": only true above the 15–20 days-of-use threshold — and at that point, buying is simply the better deal. Renting isn't an ideology: it's a case-by-case calculation.

Why peer-to-peer (and not the rental shop)

Commercial rental has always existed, but for millennials peer-to-peer has three decisive advantages. First, proximity: the lender is a ten-minute walk away, not in an industrial estate on the edge of town. Second, price: a private owner monetising an already-amortised item can charge less than a company with a warehouse and staff. Third — and for the review generation this is the one that matters most — verifiable trust: profiles, two-way reviews, a digital security deposit and QR-code handover confirmations make an exchange between strangers as safe as (and often more transparent than) a commercial transaction.

This is exactly the problem Lendmates was built to solve: making renting between neighbours as simple and protected as ordering food delivery. We're already seeing it happen in our first communities, as we tell in how Lendmates is changing consumption in Milan.

And Gen Z? Even further along

If millennials arrived at renting through calculation, Gen Z was born into it. For people under 28, ownership matters even less: wardrobes are rented, clothes are resold on Vinted, gear is shared. Re-commerce and rental platforms are to them what eBay was to millennials: obvious infrastructure, not innovation.

What this means for the future of consumption

Nobody is going to stop buying. But the direction is clear: for occasionally-used items, access is replacing ownership as the default choice of an entire generation — and of the one after it. The reasons are solid because they converge: it's cheaper, it frees up space, it cuts environmental impact, and thanks to peer-to-peer platforms it's finally simple and safe.

For anyone who owns things, the message is the mirror image: a full basement is no longer just a cost. It's a small inventory that an entire generation is ready to rent.

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