More Than Half of Millennials Are Now Homeowners

More millennials are homeowners than renters these days.

Despite a challenging market for buyers over the past few years, millennials overcame these obstacles to transition from a generation of renters to a generation of owners. According to Rent Cafe, 51.5% of millennials were homeowners in 2022, representing 18.2 million people last year. Comparatively, both baby boomers and Generation X outnumber millennials as homeowners; 32.1 million baby boomers and 24.4 million Generation X members were homeowners last year. Only 2 million Generation Z members were homeowners.

Millennials’ pace in homebuying took a leap between 2017 to 2022, increasing 64%, as 7.1 million members became homeowners. Millennials saw a 44% jump in their annual median income in the five-year period. Meanwhile, Generation X was the only other generation to have homebuying outpace renting, that generation added 1.9 million new homeowners. On the other hand, boomers lost 350,000 owner households. Generation Z remains a generation of renters, with 74% claiming that status. Generation Z renters grew 4.5 million in the timeframe, a 391% increase, but also added 1.6 million households, a 455% gain, as more members left their college residences and moved out of their parents’ home.

In Philadelphia, millennial homeowners rose 77.2% between 2017 and 2022, while renters dropped 10.4%. Baby boomer owners fell 7.8%, but boomer renters increased 10.6 %; Generation X owners rose 3.1% and renters jumped 7.4%. Generation Z saw a 342.5% gain in owners and a 2,145.5% gain in renters. In Pittsburgh, homeownership rose across all generations. Boomers grew 17.1%, Generation X increased 18.3% and millennials rose 18.7%. Rents only decreased among Generation X (dropped 26.6%), but grew for boomers (22.6%) and millennials (2.9%). (There was no data available for Generation Z in Pittsburgh.) In Allentown, homeownership reached 64.4% among all generations, an increase of 66.7%.