Basma Ahmad leaves her apartment in Arlington, Va., just after 7 a.m., walking a few blocks to a Metro station before catching the train into Washington. By the time she reaches her office downtown, the commute has taken close to an hour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ahmad, 25, moved to the United States from Pakistan last year to work in policy research. She shares a three-bedroom apartment with two roommates, and her portion of the rent is about $1,100 a month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s manageable,\u201d Ahmad said. \u201cBut when you start thinking about saving for the future \u2014 like actually buying a place someday \u2014 that\u2019s when it starts to feel kind of far away.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For generations, Americans considered homeownership one of the most recognizable markers of the American Dream. Purchasing a house long symbolized stability, upward mobility and middle-class security. But for many young people in the United States, navigating rising rents and home prices made that milestone harder to reach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Housing affordability has moved to the center of economic anxiety and political debate in the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The average first-time homebuyer in the United States rose to 40 years old<\/a>, said Rep. Ann Wagner, R-Mo., during a congressional discussion about housing affordability. Wagner serves on the House Financial Services Committee, which has held several hearings on housing and urban development in recent months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The statistic has circulated in policy debates and news coverage, reinforcing concerns that the traditional timeline for achieving financial stability, from starting a career to eventually buying a home, may be shifting further into adulthood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Housing costs also shape how Americans define affordability, according to a New York Times\/Siena poll<\/a> from January. Many respondents expressed greater concern about what they consider major life milestones, including owning housing, having a family and retiring comfortably. <\/p>\n\n\n\n From the same poll, 77% of the respondents agreed that achieving a \u201cmiddle-class lifestyle\u201d became harder than it was a generation ago. In particular, several economic forces have converged to make buying a home more difficult.<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to data from real estate brokerage Redfin<\/a>, a household would need to earn roughly $110,000 a year to afford a typical U.S. home. Meanwhile, the company estimated the median U.S. household income to be just over $86,000.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe primary problem younger Americans face is that the cost of buying a new home has risen more quickly than incomes,\u201d said Yonah Freemark, principal research associate at the Urban Institute.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mortgage costs have compounded the pressure. At current interest rates, a typical buyer would spend about 38% of income on housing payments, compared with about 24% before the pandemic, according to an analysis from J.P. Morgan<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHigh interest rates have made taking out mortgages prohibitively expensive,\u201d Freemark said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At the same time, home prices have continued to climb. The 2026 Housing Supply Gap Report from Realtor.com<\/a> estimates the United States is short more than four million homes, a gap that has contributed to rising prices and limited inventory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Freemark added that because home values have increased quickly, the amount of debt people must take on also rose quickly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n How cities grow and how quickly housing supply can respond to demand also shapes housing affordability, according to Wallace D. Lira, urban development researcher at MIT.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In many cities, residents increasingly seek housing close to jobs and transit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBut construction and land-use decisions often take years to adjust to that demand,\u201d Lira said. \u201cWhen housing becomes scarce in economically dynamic cities, younger residents tend to absorb the shock first.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Across the country, rising costs are making younger Americans reimagine their future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Diego Ramirez, a 20-year-old business economics student at the University of California, Los Angeles, said housing costs in Southern California are something he and his friends talk about often.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ramirez shares a two-bedroom apartment in Westwood, Calif., with three other students and pays about $1,000 a month each for a shared bedroom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI mean, everyone talks about owning a house someday,\u201d Ramirez said. \u201cBut in L.A., it\u2019s hard to picture how that actually happens.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ramirez said some of his classmates already expect they may have to move away from the region after graduating if they want to afford housing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cA lot of people assume they\u2019ll end up somewhere cheaper,\u201d he said. \u201cL.A. is great, but it\u2019s expensive.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some economists have disputed the widely cited statistics about the rising age of first-time homebuyers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Craig Richardson criticized<\/a> the survey data<\/a> from the National Association of Realtors 2025 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers. Richardson said the data may not fully represent the broad population of buyers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n He cited Federal Reserve credit panel data that suggested the median age of first-time homebuyers is closer to 33 and had remained relatively stable since the early 2000s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Still, economists broadly agree that housing affordability pressures have intensified.<\/p>\n\n\n\n During a hearing in the House Financial Services Committee, Stephen Moore, co-founder of Unleash Prosperity, said demand for housing surged after the pandemic while supply struggled to keep pace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n