Forbes reports that 37% of Americans ages 25 to 34 owned homes at the end of 2015, showing that homeownership is not a thing of the past.
That’s right, the Millennial homeowner is not some one-in-a-billion, mythical unicorn. Under the right social and economic conditions, today’s twenty- and thirty-somethings are buying, particularly as they get married and start families.
Who is the Millennial buyer? “They are disproportionately married. They are disproportionately well-educated and more affluent. They are disproportionately white,” says Laurie Goodman, co-director of the Housing Finance Policy Center at the Urban Institute.
The generational homeownership gap is real. A substantially smaller share of Millennials—born between 1981 and 1997—own homes (32%) than do older generations (the rate is 60% for Gen X and 75% for Baby Boomers). Even the stronger-than-you-probably-expected 37% of older Millennials who own lags the 45% of Gen Xers and Boomers who did so at the same age. Demographics, economics and social trends are working against many of us—but they are not working against all of us.
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