Snitz mansplains the housing crisis
- snitzoid
- Jun 27
- 4 min read
Buying a home has gotten harder for young adults in most U.S. metro areas
Scranton, PA. That's the most affordable city in the US according to PEW Research. Plus you know who's from there!
By Richard Fry and Blen Wondimu, PEW Research
June 24, 2026
Young adults in the United States are facing tough economic headwinds. For many, rising costs and a challenging job market are making it harder to afford basic expenses. That can make owning a home feel further out of reach.
About nine-in-ten adults younger than 40 (89%) say it’s harder for young adults today to buy a home than it was for their parents’ generation, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. Young adults are also less likely than older ones to say buying a home is a very good investment.
Since 2019, home prices in the U.S. have risen faster than young adults’ incomes, which has made buying a home even more challenging. This is true both at the national level and in most metropolitan areas around the country, according to a Center analysis of government data.
One way of measuring home affordability is to compare the median price of a home with the median household income. This is often expressed as the price-to-income ratio.
Between 2019 and 2024:
The inflation-adjusted median home value rose 30% (from $269,600 to $350,000).
Inflation-adjusted median household income for households headed by those under 40 rose only 9% (from $92,700 to $100,900).
As a result, the price-to-income ratio for households headed by those under 40 rose from 2.9 in 2019 to 3.5 in 2024. The only other period when the price-to-income ratio for young persons reached this level was during the housing bubble of the mid-2000s. It peaked at 3.6 in 2006. Before 2000, it hovered around 2.5.
Other factors that influence the affordability of homes
Home affordability for young adults depends on more than just home prices and income. Factors such as mortgage rates, property taxes, home insurance and lending standards also play a role. Several of these factors have changed since 2019. For example, according to Freddie Mac, the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate increased from 3.9% in 2019 to 6.7% in 2024.
All these things have an impact on the monthly costs of owning a home. And those costs have risen significantly since 2019. Using the median home price and other costs for each year:
In 2019, if a homebuyer made a 3.5% down payment and had a mortgage rate of 3.9% on a $269,600 home, their monthly costs would have been $1,689. (Read “About this research” for more on how this was calculated.)
In 2024, with 3.5% down and a 6.7% mortgage rate on a $350,000 home, their monthly costs would have been $2,776.
Fewer young adults can now afford these monthly housing costs. In 2019, 56% of renter households younger than 40 had enough income to afford the monthly cost of owning a home. By 2024, that share had dropped to 37%.
Even before considering the monthly cost of owning a home, buyers need to come up with a down payment. In a 2024 Federal Reserve survey, 70% of renters under age 40 said they rent rather than own because they cannot afford a down payment. This was a bigger factor than not being able to afford the monthly mortgage.
The cost of a down payment has also gone up sharply in recent years as home prices have risen.
For the $269,600 home in 2019, a 3.5% down payment and an additional 3.0% in closing costs would have required a buyer to have $17,500 in cash.
For the $350,000 home in 2024, a similar down payment and closing costs would have been roughly $22,800.
Views of homeownership
Most adults (87%) say that buying a home is harder for young adults today than it was for their parents’ generation. Adults under 40 are slightly more likely than those 40 and older to say this (89% vs. 85%).
Despite the challenges young adults face, most Americans (67%) say buying a home is a good investment these days. Only 14% say it’s a bad investment, and 18% say it’s neither. But adults under 40 are less likely than older adults to say it’s a very good investment.
Home affordability trends in U.S. metro areas
In many ways, home affordability is more of a local story than a national one, as home prices and incomes differ widely across the U.S.
For households headed by those younger than 40, homes have gotten less affordable in most metro areas where data is available.
Median home values grew faster than the median income of young adult households in 142 of these 160 metropolitan areas from 2019 to 2024.
We classified metro areas into four groups based on the price-to-income ratio:
Very affordable: Less than 2.5 price-to-income ratio
Somewhat affordable: Greater than or equal to 2.5 and less than 3.5
Somewhat unaffordable: Greater than or equal to 3.5 and less than 5
Very unaffordable: Greater than or equal to 5
In 2019, 59% of the metros with available data were very or somewhat affordable for households younger than 40. The other 41% were somewhat or very unaffordable.
By 2024, the situation reversed: 39% of the metros were somewhat or very affordable and 61% were somewhat or very unaffordable.
U.S. metro areas with the highest and lowest house price-to-income ratios in 2024
There were four states in 2024 in which all metro areas with available data were very unaffordable: California, Hawaii, Nevada and Utah.
The 10 least affordable metros nationwide were in California or Hawaii. The 10 most affordable metros were spread across New York, Illinois, Missouri, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
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