Millennials are now a homeowner-majority generation — a milestone achieved amid a global pandemic and an unsteady housing market. The country’s largest generation has added millions to the homeowner ranks in the last decade alone and reached 18.2 million owners last year, according to recent data from the listing website RentCafe. But this population, comprised of Americans born between 1981 and 1996, reached this hallmark of the American dream later than both their parents and grandparents, when their average age was 34. Generation X and baby boomers achieved this feat at ages 32 and 33 respectively. “There was a long-standing belief that millennials never wanted to own and were perfectly content renting. That belief has proven to be false. The reality was — millennials were simply delaying big life moments compared to prior generations,” Zonda chief economist Ali Wolf told The Hill. “This is because of a combination of reasons, including more women entering the labor force and having children later, delayed marriage and student loan debt,” Wolf added.

Millennial buyers are also facing a nagging lack of housing stock, stubbornly high home prices, volatile mortgage rates and growing inflation. These younger buyers are also competing against some older buyers who’ve amassed substantial equity through previous home purchases, all while the average cost of a first mortgage is soaring. Persistent lack of housing is also hindering millennials’ ability to find their first home. This is due partly to years of under-building following the 2008 financial crisis and housing crash, the end of which coincided with millennials forming their own households. “Our estimates suggest that we have seen housing construction — both single-family and multifamily — lag behind household formation. In other words, we haven’t built enough homes for millions of new households, and that’s driving up the cost of owning and renting existing homes and apartments while leaving fewer existing homes and apartments vacant,” Hale said.

Source: The Hill