The financial pendulum has swung again, making buying a home more affordable than renting in a majority of major housing markets for the first time in nearly a decade. That assessment comes from a RealtyTrac analysis of rental cost data compiled by HUD covering 543 counties nationwide. The analysis showed that in 68 percent of the counties, renting a three-bedroom property required 27 percent of median household income while buying the median-priced home required 25 percent. Realty Trac also found a significant blip in that pattern: In the markets most attractive to “millenials,” renting absorbs 30 percent of income and buying 36 percent, indicating that in those markets, prospective home buyers are having a harder than average time both saving for a down payment, affording a home. “First-time buyers and potential boomerang homebuyers are stuck between a rock and a hard place in today’s housing market,” Daren Blomquist, vice president at RealtyTrac, said in a press statement. “Many of the markets with the jobs and amenities they want have hard-to-afford rents and even harder-to-afford home prices; while the more affordable markets have fewer well-paying jobs and tend to be off the beaten path.”