According to Laurie Goodman, co-director of the Housing Finance Policy Center at the Urban Institute, millennials are indeed buying homes – under the right social and economic circumstances, marriage in particular.
As of the end of 2015, 37% of people ages 25 to 34, or 7.6 million millennials, owned homes in the United States. Goodman’s research shows marriage is the single biggest predictor of whether or not a millennial is a homeowner, increasing the probability of ownership by 18 percentage points. Having at least one parent who owned a home increases the likelihood by 10.9 percentage points, and having a child raises it by 6.2 percentage points.
At the same time, student debt and rent reduce the likelihood that a given millennial will own a home. And those millennials who buy will often seek homes in less expensive metros or live at home for a time to save money.
So many trends weigh against millennial ownership: We tend to favor big cities with high rents, and many of us are saddled with student debt. We are also marrying and procreating later. Nevertheless, survey after survey shows we do want to own homes someday—and some of us are subverting the macro trends to do it.
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