In developed economies, individuals are planning their milestones later in life than the generation before them. Parents are having children later, couples are getting married at older ages, and buying a home is coming further down the tracks as well. While some of these decisions are a matter of personal preference, others are a result of the economic cycle. While 90% of Gen Zers surveyed in a recent report said they want to own a home one day, 79% also said they are being priced out of the market.
TL;DR
- The median age of US homebuyers increased from 39 to 59 in just 15 years.
- Younger generations like Gen Z are being priced out of the housing market.
- Homeownership is increasingly delayed, impacting traditional milestones and the American Dream.
- Economic factors and rising rates contribute to the affordability crisis for new buyers.
Similarly, though 55% of millennials are now said to own a home, they've taken considerably longer to achieve homeownership. Census Bureau Data, as examined in Apartment List’s 2025 millennial homeownership report, indicates that at 30 years old, 33% of millennials owned property, whereas 42% of Gen X and 48% of baby boomers did.
A striking statistic illustrated the severity of recent trends: the average age of the first-time homebuyer reached 40 years of age in 2025, as reported by The National Association of Realtors (NAR). However, Apollo chief economist Torsten Slok, a prominent Wall Street analyst, provided context on Thursday, noting that the average age of homebuyers across the U.S. Has also dramatically increased. In a memo (and chart) distributed to Coins2Day today, Slok's analysis of the same NAR data revealed that the median age for U.S. Homebuyers in 2025 is 59. This is a significant jump from just 15 years prior, when the median age was 39.
Slok's data also highlights the substantial rise in the median age of purchasers following the 2008 financial crisis. For instance, from 1986 to 2007, the median age of U.S. Property buyers grew by just five years, moving from 34 to 39.
A disillusioned generation
Young shoppers are bearing the brunt of a property market facing an affordability crisis, according to Liam Bailey, the global head of Knight Frank’s Research Department. In an exclusive interview with Coins2Day, he stated: “I think it’s probably Gen Zs are the ones who are getting who are getting hit—I guess anyone who’s entering the market for the first time is probably most affected.”
“[They’re] suffering the most … because they haven’t got a stake in [the market] at the moment, and they’re entering the market just at a time when rates are more expensive and there’s no stock out there,” he added.
For a considerable time, possessing one's own home has been regarded as a fundamental element of the American Dream, a notion that is rapidly diminishing for younger employees. In fact, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon recently elaborated on the benchmarks have changed for those newly entering the workforce: "Upon graduation, irrespective of whether it's from high school, community college, or a four-year institution, acquiring the necessary skills to secure employment is paramount."
“It’s not enough anymore to say, ‘I can work hard,'” Dimon said in a recent interview with CNN. “In the old days, you could be in 10th grade, go get a factory [job] in Detroit, and eventually you could afford a family, a home, a car, and that may not be true anymore.”