It looks like cutting back on avocado toast has finally worked for financially challenged millennials (sarcasm intended). For years, the generation born between 1981 to 1996 has been browbeaten for lagging behind other groups in terms of life milestones (salary earnings, homeownership, debt pay-down), but the tide has finally turned according to new data.
Recent research from RentCafe revealed that there are more homeowners than renters among millennials, the first time that’s happened within the generation. The report showed that approximately 52% of millennials owned a home by the end of 2022, based on Census and survey data from the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) project.
The new research shows there are now 18.2 million millennial homeowners as of 2022, increasing by 7.1 million over five years.
“The pandemic and the evolution of the real estate market during the last few years didn’t suppress Millennials’ appetite for buying forever homes,” the report said. “On the contrary, most Millennials are now sipping their matchas in their own homes rather than in rentals. In fact, this demographic gained 10.8 million homeowners in the last decade, including 7.1 million in the last five years to reach 18.2 million in 2022. This boost tipped the balance in favor of homeownership and made Millennials an owner-majority generation with a share of 51.5%.”
As a result of this buying boom, the renter population is now dominated by Zoomers, the generation right behind millennials.
The Gen Z cohort gained nearly 4.5 million renters in the last five years, leading to a renter share of 74%, while all the other generations lost renters, the report said.