Practically all the attendees at Realtor.com’s Saturday afternoon panel – Housing: The Key to the American Dream – were 20-somethings. According to the panel’s experts, it’s unlikely many of them have yet felt the joy of buying their first home.
Realtor.com’s panelists presented data showing that the median age at which a person buys their first home in the U.S. has risen from 30 to 40. Jessica Lautz, vice president of research at the National Association of Realtors, said some media outlets are blaming the rise on Gen Z’s inability to adopt sound budgeting practices, rather than the obvious culprits – high home prices and interest rates.
“It used to be avocado toast and cappuccinos, but now I’ve even seen narratives, honestly, on social media from a major media outlet in the last two weeks, that blamed rotisserie chicken as one of the reasons why Gen Z cannot get into home ownership,” Lautz deadpanned, drawing laughs. “If you’re blaming a $5 chicken as the reason, that’s a really big problem.”
Jung Choi, principal research associate at the Urban Institute, said despite claims to the contrary, young people today are as interested in owning their own homes as any previous generation, with surveys showing that about 85% still consider home ownership their dream. “When I first did my research seven years ago, there was a lot of media saying that maybe Millennials are different – they don’t want to buy homes, maybe they want to move around and live a nomadic life or something,” Choi said. “But when we looked at the data, that wasn’t their preference.”
Choi said homebuying among young people dropped after the 2008 housing crisis and has recovered only a little. Data from Realtor.com’s study explained why: Median home prices have soared from $96,000 in 1990 to $418,000 in 2025. The number of years necessary to save for a downpayment has risen from 3.2 to 9.7.
Danielle Hale, chief economist at Realtor.com, said the group’s data shows a housing shortage of about 4 million homes. Researchers agree that more young people are living with their parents, she added, and wondered if that was their preference.
“Yeah, no one wants to live with their parents forever,” Lautz opined. “The bottom line is we’re short homes…. And if you look at this nationwide, the supply crisis that we really have is for people earning $75,000 or less – so, a school teacher, a first responder – those are the folks who are being priced out of our local communities.”
The panel took a sustained look at Realtor.com’s data connecting the early purchase of a home to generational wealth. The panelists said people who buy a home by the age of 30 are worth $119,000 more at age 50, compared with those who do not. The findings show that this generational wealth is “sticky”: Children raised in homeowner households are 18% more likely to become homeowners themselves by age 35. Homeownership among white households is at 75%. Among Black and Hispanic households it is at 44% and 49%, respectively.
And, for most people, their home is their wealth, the panelists pointed out. They said purchasing a home is the most important thing a person can do to achieve the American dream, which they defined as being able to live comfortably and pass wealth on to their children.
“What we estimate is, the typical homeowner in America actually has $430,000 in net worth,” Hale said, citing a figure very close to the median price of a home. “And it’s been growing because home prices continue to grow. The typical renter has $10,000. And it is not growing.”
