Im old enough to remember when the news said it was under 25. Then 30. And now 35.
Average home buyer age in 2000: 35 years old
Average home buyer age in 2026: 56 years old
What I find horrifying about North America’s housing situation (I’m in Canada) is that these boomers own these giant McMansions that are only possible to buy with boomer money. My generation doesn’t want these giant houses, we can’t afford them, we can’t furnish them, and we certainly don’t have the time or energy to clean all of that, but it’s all that builders seem to build (they’re the most profitable type of home for a given amount of materials and labour)
Right now they’re all trying to downsize into the same homes first time homebuyers want and nobody’s buying their gigantic McMansions (look at Florida right now. Nobody is buying and it seems like every house is for sale right now)
Once enough of them can’t sell or straight up die (and their kids can’t sell) it crashes the entire market permanently. All of these houses get repriced to what they actually should be (good) but it collapses the entire fake money system which is based on inflated house prices (my home country’s economy is basically just real-estate speculation)
And of course the group that will be fucked over the most are the young people. It’s never the profiteering home owners who caused this whole situation in the first place…
There’s also the issue of municipalities being desperately reliant on inflated valuations for housing to get enough property tax. A big enough crash is going to cause towns and cities to run out of money…
Sounds like parents left their children a shit world to grow into.
Not their fault
it is literally 100% their fault lmao, provable by MATH
It is absolutely their fault.
If they could have fixed it, that means you can fix it too
Correct, no argument there. Blame game doesn’t help unfuck things.
A third of young adults between the ages of 25 and 35 – 25.2 million people – were living with their parents in 2025. Of those, 70% had jobs, and many held college degrees, highlighting that the increase in at-home living stems from high housing costs rather than labor market conditions.
The national median asking rent is 18% higher than pre-pandemic levels, while the national median home listing price is 34% higher, according to data from the real estate company.
“Every adult still in a childhood bedroom is a household not formed, a lease unsigned, a starter home unpurchased,” said Hannah Jones, a senior economist at Realtor.com.
There it is. The pearl clutching over capitalism. They aren’t spending money on buying starter homes!!
Honestly, multi-generational living can be really beneficial. Just not for capitalists.
“A starter home unpurchased”
When have “starter homes” been a thing in recent history?! LMAO. In a lot of places everything is a very specific “single family” size starting at like “low 400s” all the way to a million.
One would have to look for such a place “with good bones”, because it’s not the most profitable development type anymore, and even if they did make them, new constructions are hastily thrown together as cheaply as possible before being covered with a pretty facade.
They fall apart quick, because their primary purpose is to sell.
I grew up in a house with my grandmother, and she was an incredible boon to my parents in taking care of us, plus she stayed surrounded by people who loved her and knew how to care for her (non-technically, things like helping her dress and use the bathroom).
So our family forwent paying for childcare, elder care, and an entire extra household of space, things, and utilities, plus we got the social benefits of having very young and old people together (grounds the young people and teaches them to be gentle while keeping the old people rooted in a community), all for the low price of inter generational living.
It’s so staggering to remember that for a very long time in human history, something like this was the norm. Now culture often tries to cast this as some kind of weird deviation.
That sounds like a really lovely set up
It was great. I’m a younger millennial who grew up with someone in my household who remembered WWI starting (she had my mom late, and then my mom had me late), which exposed me to a lot of history that most people my age didn’t get.
She was a teenager when the depression began, and because she was the oldest of 14 kids, her parents sent her to a convent to take over caring for her; she was one of the few women of her generation to get a master’s degree; she was living at the base on Pearl Harbor when it was attacked; and she rented out a room in her house to several of the first black students at the university where she taught, because no one else would rent to them. That’s a wild life story.
Unfortunately, I didn’t think about it when I had the chance, but I really regret not recording a set of interviews with her.
I don’t personally want to live with my parents, but I’ve spent the majority of my life living with flatmates or similar situations, by choice. I’ve always preferred it over having a place entirely to myself, makes coming home feel more like visiting friends than just returning to silence. Requires people you get along well with though…
My partner and myself share a house with another couple and it’s a great arrangement for us. We’re close friends, we all give each other plenty of space, and it’s nice to have our chosen family involved in our day to day lives.
I think the most important aspect is making sure everyone has their own space they can go to get away from others. We all need our alone time!
Yeah, exactly. If I could end up in a situation like this longterm, I’d be happy.
For a while in my early 20s, I was staying with a friend of my parents because I just moved to a new city and she offered. She has a small house, as part of an enclave of about 20 houses built around a big common area, including workspaces, a massive kitchen and other amenities. They had a cooking schedule, so everyone in the 20 houses cooks at some point for the entire little community, and you just show up at dinner time for a meal if you’re not cooking that day. It’s super well organized and everyone seemed pretty happy with the setup.
I LOVED it. If I could achieve or find that one day I’d never leave…
I’m an introvert, I LOVE that I come home and I either have the place to myself or my fiance is the only person that could be home. Even then, sometimes I go fuck off in the garage after working in a garage all day just to have a bit to unwind. Dealing with people at work all day is so draining I couldn’t imagine having to deal with more people when I get home, but introverts drain around people and extroverts charge or whatever so to each their own!
Oh, I’m an introvert too, but I also suck at being the one to ask friends to do things or go places, so its easier to just have them hanging around at home essentially. But I also have plenty of options for getting away from home, so I don’t feel trapped that way
Honestly, multi-generational living can be really beneficial. Just not for capitalists.
Indeed. I mean, I’m assuming most of these people are doing this involuntarily, but if we are doing real talk, the idea of the single-family unit that can be plucked up and plopped down anywhere in the country is something that is mostly in service of capitalism, not necessarily for happiness of the individual, non-atomic-family cohesion, etc.
It seems like nearly all of the culture casts anyone that doesn’t leave their parents’ home by the end of high school or at the end of college as being utter failures and losers, and not worthy of romantic partners, or worthy of really any respect and so on. How much of this is orchestrated is hard to really say, but Hollywood certainly doesn’t help.
I think the tide is shifting on the cultural view of living at home being a failure. It’s incredibly important for the young adults in these multi-generational homes to actually act like adults - take care of the house chores without prompting, do their own laundry, live their life not as a child under their parent’s roof but as an adult sharing living space with other adults.
Multigeneration households are great if they actually plan for it. Starting a family in a house thats already servicing a full family can be difficult and many of them probably can’t afford to upsize to a more reasonably sized household if needed. Multigeneration living alone still wouldn’t fix the housing crisis but it could relieve some pressure and could be a more affordable option for those able to do it.
That’s why I said it “can be really beneficial”, because you’re right, it takes intentionality and open communication to really work well.
I know that my fellow millennials have already started feeling the pinch between taking care of our kids and having to take care of our aging parents by this point. It’s only going to get worse and more expensive.
I wonder if Hannah Jones realizes what a cunt whore thing to say that was.
I’m thinking no.
You know what else is at an all time high?
Corporate ownership of homes. Funny, huh?
There’s no difference renting from a corp or from an individual landlord
Is this a bot or something? People could afford to OWN their own home js the problem here. That’s the whole point.
And the mortgages are even higher.
Actually u probably have that backwards unfortunately. My mortgage is 1200 a month, which is what my co worker was paying to rent a studio in the same town as me. Granted after property tax and insurance escrowed in its 1700, that’s still cheaper than any apartment in the state I just moved from a few years ago! And I’m sure rents gone up since
I bought my first house with my mom. She couldn’t afford to buy one on her own and I couldn’t either. US is fucked. Eat the Rich and build homes form their bones.
I expect my children to stay with me forever. Then they can have the house.
Even though many young people may be saving thousands by not paying rent and living at home, they may also be delaying first-time home ownership, which is still a key driver of household wealth, Jones said.
If (a) they aren’t missing out on higher-paying jobs by not being able to move close enough to such a job and (b) if they’re actually reasonably investing what they’re saving on housing costs — a very important “if” here — they’ll potentially be considerably better off by doing that.
Say I save $2k/mo on housing for a single year and I’m 20. That’s $24k for that year. At a 6.5% average long-run S&P 500 return, accounting for inflation, that doubles about every 11 years. At 31, that becomes $48k. At 42, $96k. At 53, $192k. At 64, $384k. At 75, $768k.
One year of saved housing costs, just doing nothing other than living with the folks. If they save it, and if they invest it reasonably.
Also, the idea that buying property is a key driver of wealth relies on a bunch of assumptions regarding buying in an area where the cost WILL go up, where there isn’t some massive, hidden maintenance cost (oh, the roof contained asbestos and we didn’t know) and that the housing market in general will remain insane.
I’m moving back to Geneva, and recently read an article stating the Swiss housing market has gone up by 94% for apartments , 80% for houses between 2000 and 2021.
That’s not sustainable…
Yeah, most people tend to live at home. That’s what home is.
To be clear, they don’t live in THEIR home
It’s a terrible title. “Empty Nesters” refers to parents, but the rest of the title is about people lot living in homes they own. And regardless of whether you own your dwelling, you still “live at home.” Those who own homes, still live at home.
It depends on how you define home.
Most girls are afraid to death to live in their husbands house with his parents
Well yeah, girls shouldn’t be getting married at all. They should be growing and learning and being children.
It really depends on if you’re living as an independent adult or if you’re still having mommy do your laundry for you. Millennials over all are more understanding of financial difficulties. It’s been rough.
