The cost differential between owning and renting a home is a 52% premium for owning — the most it’s been out of whack since 1996 and just before the 2008 housing crash, The Wall Street Journal reports.

By comparison, before the Great Recession of 2008, mortgages peaked at a 33% premium to renting. After the crisis, interest rates tanked, housing supply skyrocketed, and it became 12% cheaper to own a home than to rent one.

Generally, monthly mortgage rates and rents have been the same, as was the case between 1996 through the middle of this year, CBRE data shows.

However, with the Federal Reserve raising interest rates, the average 30-year mortgage hit 8% last week and has been in that range for weeks.

This translates into hundreds of dollars more in borrowing costs a month, putting home ownership out of reach for many due to steep borrowing costs and home prices.

Mortgage rates are a whopping 60% higher than they were in 2020.

For instance, an 8% 30-year mortgage on a home costing $410,200 with a 10% downpayment would require a buyer to be able to come up with $3,000 a month, according to Bankrate — a full 60% higher than if they were to have bought the home in 2020.

There are just four large metropolitan areas in the U.S. where it is cheaper to buy a home than rent, according to Redfin. They are: Detroit, Philadelphia, Cleveland and Houston, where mortgage payments versus monthly rent are running 20%, 41%, 43% and 48% less, respectively.

The math is making it difficult for people to even scrape together a 10% down payment.

“There is a lot of shadow demand for homes, with a bunch of first-time buyers waiting on the sidelines for the payment-to-paycheck calculation to work for them,” says Odeta Kushi, deputy chief economist of First American Financial Corp.

Roughly 80% of outstanding U.S. mortgages have an interest rate lower than 5%. These “golden handcuffs” are keeping homeowners staying put, which is also reducing the inventory of homes on the market and helping to keep their prices high.

While one might assume that landlords could raise rents, the supply of apartments and homes available for rent is not as tight as the supply of homes for sale. There’s also been a rush to build apartments. This is keeping rents from rising, one silver lining in the U.S. housing market.