HOUSTON – Millennials have hit a housing milestone. Fifty-one percent are now homeowners, according to the Apartment List Millennial Homeownership Report.
“Millennials have had the slowest transition from renters to homeowners,” said Rob Warnock, who drafted the Apartment List survey. “By age 30, 42 percent of millennials owned their homes, compared to 48 percent of Gen Xers, 51 percent of baby boomers and nearly 60 percent of ‘the silent generation’ [people approaching their 80s and 90s].”
Apartment List defines millennials as anyone born between 1981 and 1996.
Right now, Generation X is nearing 70 percent homeownership. Seventy-seven percent of “silents” own their homes, but the rate is slowly declining.
Baby Boomers, born into the suburbs that emerged rapidly after World War II, maintain the nation’s highest homeownership rate today at 78 percent.
However, the news isn’t entirely positive for millennials. Apartment List’s survey says 25 percent of millennial renters have given up hope of owning a home, and two-thirds say they have no money set aside for a down payment.