Who buys the house next: the ownership gap between young and older adults, metro by metro

In 2025, 13.7 million households headed by someone 75 or older owned their home, and 12.2 million households headed by someone 25 to 34 rented. That is 112 older owners for every 100 young renters. The figure passed 100 in 2023, the year the oldest baby boomers turned 77, and has risen each year since. In 2013 it was 83.

The two groups are at opposite ends of a typical home sale. Owners 75 and older are the households most likely to sell, move into care or leave a home to heirs over the next decade or so. Renters aged 25 to 34 are the largest pool of first-time buyers. When the first group grows faster than the second, more of the homes that come to market depend on other buyers: movers from other metros, older buyers trading down and investors.

The ratio rises alongside a gap the Urban Institute described on Nov. 2. In 2024, 43% of households headed by someone 25 to 35 owned their home, against 79% of households headed by someone 65 or older.²³ The difference was 35.8 percentage points, up from 17.5 points in 1980, and it was widest in the metros with the highest home values.

For lenders, mortgage insurers and investors, the question is practical. In each metro, who is positioned to buy the homes older owners will sell, and in what condition will those homes reach the market? The answer varies widely. Detroit has 162 older owners for every 100 young renters. Austin has 36.

The Urban Institute analysis, by John Walsh, Jung Hyun Choi and Laurie Goodman of its Housing Finance Policy Center, follows households headed by someone 25 to 35. It leaves out adults under 25 because more of them are in college than in 1980.²³

The two ends moved differently by place. In Denver, young households' ownership rate fell from 55% to 37% while older households' rose from 67% to 78%, and the gap widened by 29 points. In New York, the young households' rate barely moved, from 28% to 26%. Nearly all of New York's 23-point widening came from older households, whose rate rose from about 43% to 63%. San Francisco's gap widened by 22 points, against 18.3 nationally.²³

The distinction matters for anyone watching a housing market's turnover. A gap that widens because fewer young households buy means a thinner pool of first-time buyers. A gap that widens because more older households own, and own longer, means fewer homes coming up for sale. Most metros have some of each.

Urban's rates count households, and a young adult living with parents or roommates heads no household and drops out of the count. Urban reports that by 2024 only 41% of young adults in high-cost markets headed their own household, the lowest share of any group of metros. Counting every adult aged 25 to 34, a May 2026 Urban analysis put the ownership rate at 29% in 2024, down from 40% in 2005.²⁰

Census's American Community Survey shows the recent path. The ownership rate for householders aged 25 to 34 fell from 46.6% in 2005 to 36.8% in 2015 after the housing crash, recovered to 41.9% in 2022 during the years of low mortgage rates, and slipped to 39.3% in 2025 after rates rose. The rate for householders 65 and older stayed between 78% and 79% the whole time. So the gap went from 32.3 points in 2005 to 41.3 in 2014, narrowed to 36.4 in 2022 and widened again to 39.5 in 2025.

Census's quarterly Housing Vacancy Survey, which groups households under 35, shows the same turn. Its ownership rate for that group was 39.0% in 2022, 37.1% in 2025 and 36.2% in the first three quarters of 2026.

The Census tables use ages 25 to 34, so our rates for young householders run a few points below Urban's 25 to 35 figures, and our gaps run a few points wider. The method section explains the difference.

In San Jose, 20% of householders aged 25 to 34 own their home and 75% of those 65 and older do, a gap of 54.5 points. The median home there is worth about 9.7 times the median household income, a ratio this article calls price-to-income. San Diego, San Francisco and Los Angeles follow, each with a gap near 50 points and prices more than eight times income.

The narrowest gaps among the 50 largest metros are in the Midwest. Detroit's is 26.8 points, and Kansas City, Cincinnati and Minneapolis-St. Paul are each near 30. In those metros the median home costs less than four times the median income, and half or more of householders aged 25 to 34 own.

Across the 50 largest metros, the correlation between price-to-income and the gap is 0.65, and between price-to-income and the young ownership rate it is minus 0.79. On a scale where 1 or minus 1 would be a perfect straight line, both are strong.

From 2012 to 2025, the gap widened most in Salt Lake City (9.9 points), Oklahoma City (9.2) and Raleigh (8.6), and coastal California kept widening from an already high level: San Jose went from 52.5 to 54.5 points and San Diego from 50.7 to 53.1. It narrowed most in Detroit, from 35.6 to 26.8, as young ownership there rose. One-year survey estimates for a single metro have sampling error of a few points, so small changes are within the noise.

Price explains much of the pattern, and a few metros show its limits. Memphis has a 51-point gap with prices under four times income, and Austin a 50-point gap at four and a half times. The ratio compares the typical home with the typical household's income, and in some metros young households earn well below that median or arrive in large numbers to rent first. Urban also found that recent price growth matters: metros where prices rose fastest from 2014 to 2024 saw young adults' share of the population fall, whether or not the metro was expensive.²³

The cost evidence is strong. From 2019 to 2024, home values rose faster than the incomes of households under 40 in 142 of 160 metros, and the national ratio of home value to their income went from 2.9 to 3.5, according to Pew Research Center.¹⁹

Other research gives more weight to timing. Jonas Fisher and Martin Gervais of the Chicago Fed found that later marriage and greater household earnings risk account for 60% to 80% of the decline in young ownership from 1980 to 2005, years when mortgage credit was getting easier to obtain.¹⁷ The American Enterprise Institute's Housing Center finds that the whole age curve has shifted down: ownership among adults 30 to 39 fell from about 60% in 2000 to under 50% in 2022.¹⁸ AEI puts the cause in a national shortage of homes.

The older side has causes of its own. The federal exclusion on the gain from selling a primary home, $250,000 for a single filer and $500,000 for a married couple, has stayed at the level Congress set in 1997, so a long-time owner in an expensive metro can owe tax on a sale.¹⁴ In California, Proposition 13 assesses a home at its purchase price, so moving usually raises an owner's property tax.²⁸ Since 2021, Proposition 19 has let owners 55 and older carry their assessed value to a replacement home anywhere in the state, up to three times, which softens that cost for older owners.²⁹ Rate lock-in matters for owners who still have a mortgage. About 51% of outstanding mortgages had rates at or below 4% at the end of 2025, according to the National Mortgage Database of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), which regulates Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.¹⁰ In a model of moves up and down the housing ladder, Julia Fonseca, Lu Liu and Pierre Mabille find that a temporary rise in rates cuts mortgage borrowers' mobility by 25% and raises house prices by 4.4%.¹¹ Lock-in reaches fewer of the oldest owners: in 2025, 64% of owner households 65 and older had no mortgage at all.

Researchers disagree about how fast older owners' homes will come up for sale. Freddie Mac projects owner households headed by baby boomers to fall from about 32 million in 2022 to about 23 million in 2035, 9.2 million fewer, and describes the change as "more a tide than a flood."¹² A 2019 Zillow analysis put the eventual release as high as 20 million homes by 2037.¹³

Saty Patrabansh of FHFA studied Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loans made from 1996 to 2012. First-time buyers defaulted more often than repeat buyers, and once the study accounted for their lower credit scores, higher loan-to-value ratios and lower incomes, it found "virtually no difference" in the probability of default.¹ First-time buyers did remain less likely to prepay. Those loan terms are what collateral models already measure. Age is also a characteristic the Equal Credit Opportunity Act protects,²⁷ so the useful work is in the loan terms and the market evidence.

What has changed is where first-time buyers borrow. Freddie Mac said they made up more than 51% of the single-family primary-residence purchases it financed in 2025, the third straight year above half.³ Fannie Mae reported about half in early 2025.⁴ At FHA, first-time buyers were more than 83% of purchase endorsements in fiscal 2025.⁵ FHA loans have the smallest down payments, and in our negative equity analysis FHA, VA and USDA loans make up most of the recent loans now underwater.

The age of first-time buyers depends on who is counted. The National Association of Realtors' 2026 survey of recent buyers, released Nov. 5, put the median first-time buyer at 40 and the first-time share of purchases at 22%, up from a record low of 21% a year earlier.^6,7 A record 10% of first-time buyers paid all cash, and 28% of those cash buyers used an inheritance.⁷ The AEI Housing Center, using the New York Fed's sample of credit records, puts the median first-time mortgage borrower at 34 in 2025.⁸ Credit records leave out cash buyers, and NAR's survey covers the buyers who answer its questionnaire, so the two measure different groups.

For each metro we divided the owner households headed by someone 75 or older by the renter households headed by someone 25 to 34. A figure above 100 means older owners outnumber young renters. 21 of the 50 largest metros are above 100.

The highest figure is Tucson's, 177 older owners per 100 young renters, although its one-year estimate has the widest margin among the 50 largest metros, plus or minus 19. Most of the other high figures are in older industrial metros and Florida. Detroit has 162, Birmingham and Pittsburgh 150, Hartford 148, Cleveland 141, and St. Louis and Tampa 137. In most of these metros the median home costs less than four times the median income, and young householders already own at high rates: 53% of those aged 25 to 34 in Detroit and 47% in Pittsburgh. Florida's metros also draw buyers who move from other states, which a local count leaves out.

The lowest figures are in fast-growing metros of the South and West. Austin has 36, Seattle 50, Dallas-Fort Worth 51, Salt Lake City 54, Denver 57, and Houston and San Jose 59. These metros have drawn young renters in large numbers. In Austin, Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston, where the median home costs under five times the median income, more of those renters are in reach of buying. In San Jose and Seattle, where prices run more than six times income, fewer are.

The thinnest pool of likely first-time buyers is where both conditions hold. Miami, Sacramento, Riverside, Providence and Phoenix have more older owners than young renters, and median prices above five times income. In Miami, 29% of householders aged 25 to 34 own their home. That leaves more of the demand for older owners' homes there to movers, older buyers and investors.

The ratio describes the present. Four conditions limit its use as a guide to future sales. Buyers of every age purchase homes, and movers from other metros and investors add to the local pool. Heirs keep some homes and rent them out. New construction adds supply, heavily so in Texas. And owners 75 and older leave their homes over many years. The figure is a measure of how deep the local pool of likely first-time buyers is against the supply most likely to come from older owners, and it should be read beside sales volume and marketing time.

How older owners sell matters as much as how many sell. Philip Strahan and Song Zhang of Boston College's Center for Retirement Research matched about 10 million repeat sales to sellers' ages.² An 80-year-old seller realizes about 5% less at sale than a 45-year-old, about $20,000 on a $400,000 home, and the shortfall starts around age 70. Differences in condition and renovation explain only about a tenth of it. More of it comes from how the sale happens: older sellers more often sell without a public listing or sell to an investor, and those sales bring lower prices.

For an appraisal, that is a question about comparables. An unlisted sale to an investor may have had little exposure to the market, and an estate sale of a dated home sold as is may need a condition adjustment against an updated one. In a metro with many older owners and few young buyers, more of the recent sales will be of these kinds.

Urban lists four directions: implementing the ROAD to Housing Act, which mainly targets housing supply; raising the capital gains exclusion, so long-time owners in high-cost markets face a smaller tax bill when they sell; easier financing for buying and renovating condominiums and co-ops; and direct help for buyers, such as down payment grants and rate subsidies. On the exclusion, Urban adds that how many homes would come to market, and whether young buyers could afford them, are open questions.²³

The ROAD to Housing Act became law on July 11, 2026 as P.L. 119-101;²¹ its provisions address supply, including manufactured housing, and our ROAD Act analysis covers what it means for appraisal and collateral. The capital gains bill, the More Homes on the Market Act (H.R. 1340 and S. 3332), would raise the exclusion to $500,000 for a single filer and $1 million for a married couple and index it to inflation.^15,16 Both versions have stayed in committee since referral. Our housing bills guide covers it and the first-time buyer credits; any bill not enacted by Jan. 3 expires with this Congress.

The open question is timing. Owners 75 and older will sell over many years, and lock-in, heirs and health will set the pace more than any one policy. The 2026 survey, due in the fall of 2027, will show whether the ratio keeps rising.