Millennials have had a tough time establishing themselves as homeowners. The generation, comprising people born from 1981 to 1996, has been saddled with student debt and economic uncertainty; the oldest of the cohort faced the housing crisis and the Great Recession of the late ’00s, and the youngest graduated from college right into the pandemic.
As a result, most have been renters — until now: In 2022, millennial homeowner households become a majority among the generation, at 51.5 percent, according to a study by RentCafe.
While millennials still own fewer homes than older generations do, over the past five years about seven million have joined the ranks, bringing the total to about 18 million. That’s more than triple the gains of Gen X (born 1965 to 1980), which added two million new homeowner households, for a total of about 24 million. Baby boomers (born 1946 to 1964), still own the most homes, about 32 million, but lost around 350,000 homeowners during the same time period.
Gen Z (born 1997 to 2013) made the smallest gains in homeownership over five years, just 1.6 million, for a total of about 2 million homeowner households. They’re now the only generation with a renter majority — but, of course, some of them are still as young as 9 or 10.
In some metros, an overwhelming majority of millennials are homeowners. The largest share was found in Midland, Texas, where 82 percent owned, followed by Provo, Utah, where 76 percent did. Salinas, Calif., had the lowest share, just 19 percent, followed by San Jose, Calif., with 23 percent. Not surprisingly, more expensive metros tend to have fewer millennial owner households.
The study used census and survey data from IPUMS, part of the Institute for Social Research and Data Innovation at the University of Minnesota. To find the distribution of geographic gains in homeownership, 110 metro areas with a population of at least 500,000 were studied, and the generational breaks used were defined by the Pew Research Center.
This week’s chart shows the 10 metros with the largest share of millennial homeowners, and the 10 with the smallest.
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