In developed economies, individuals are planning their milestones later in life than the generation before them. Parents are having children later, couples are getting married at older ages, and buying a home is coming further down the tracks as well. While some of these decisions are a matter of personal preference, others are a result of the economic cycle. While 90% of Gen Zers surveyed in a recent report said they want to own a home one day, 79% also said they are being priced out of the market.
Likewise, while 55% of millennials now reportedly own a home, it took them far longer to get a foot on the property ladder. According to Census Bureau Data analyzed in Apartment List’s 2025 millennial homeownership report, at age 30, 33% of millennials were homeowners, compared to 42% of Gen X and 48% of baby boomers.
One eye-popping stat summed just how bad things have gotten in the recent past: the average age of the first-time homebuyer was 40 years old in 2025, according to the National Association of Realtors (NAR). But Apollo chief economist Torsten Slok, one of Wall Street’s most influential analysts, put it in perspective on Thursday: the average age of any homebuyer has skyrocketed in the U.S. as well. As observed in a note (and chart) shared with Fortune today, Slok calculated from the same NAR dataset that the median age of all U.S. homebuyers in 2025 is 59 years old. Just 15 years ago, it was 39 years old.
Slok’s reporting also shows the significant upward trajectory in the median age of buyers since the 2008 financial crisis. For example, between 1986 and 2007, the median age of American property buyers increased by only five years, from 34 to 39.
A disillusioned generation
Young consumers are suffering the sharpest end of a property market in an affordability crisis, according to Liam Bailey, global head of property consultants Knight Frank’s Research Department. Speaking to Fortune in an exclusive interview, he said: “I think it’s probably Gen Zs are the ones who are getting who are getting hit—I guess anyone who’s entering the market for the first time is probably most affected.”
“[They’re] suffering the most … because they haven’t got a stake in [the market] at the moment, and they’re entering the market just at a time when rates are more expensive and there’s no stock out there,” he added.
Owning the roof over one’s head has long been seen as a cornerstone of the American Dream, an ideal that is fading fast for young workers. Indeed, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon recently described how the benchmarks have changed for new entrants to the economy: “When you graduate, whether it’s high school, or community college, or college, you need the skills to get the job.
“It’s not enough anymore to say, ‘I can work hard,'” Dimon said in a recent interview with CNN. “In the old days, you could be in 10th grade, go get a factory [job] in Detroit, and eventually you could afford a family, a home, a car, and that may not be true anymore.”
