- Recent college grads face a long wait to be able to afford buying a home, according to an analysis by Mortgage Research Network.
- High home prices, student loan payments, and low starting salaries make it an uphill battle.
- Sacrifices like living with parents and cutting expenses are almost necessary to become a homeowner.
Recent college graduate Amrita Bhasin wants to own property badly.
She was inspired by her parents, immigrants from England and India who bought a property in the late '90s in Menlo Park, California, which is part of Silicon Valley.
Bhasin declined to share what her parents paid for their San Francisco area property, but according to SiliconValleyMLS.com, the median price for a home in Menlo Park in 1998 was $595,000. Today, the median price of a home in that neighborhood is $3.35 million.
"I think that made me realize that having property is the biggest asset you can have," Bhasin told Business Insider.
Bhasin, 24, graduated from UC Berkeley in 2023 and has since been looking to buy a home without much luck. During the fall of 2024, she moved in with her parents to save money, at the expense of her social life.
Bhasin, who has experience working for Big Tech, now runs her own software startup, which sometimes requires commuting to San Francisco, a city she'd like to spend more time in.
"I can't stay out late," she said. "My friends who live in San Francisco can just casually hang out with each other without much of a heads-up. For me, it's like an hour to get up to the city — you need to give a heads-up."
Bhasin is taking matters into her own hands to try to save for a home, but data shows that for recently graduated Gen Zers, aggressive saving still might not help.
The class of 2025 won't be able to comfortably buy until 2034
Due to the many factors working against them, first-time homebuyers are typically older than they used to be. According to the National Association of Realtors, the median age of a first-time buyer was 38 in 2024. In the 1980s, buyers were often in their late 20s.
And now the average college graduate from the class of 2025 won't be able to afford a home until 2034. That's according to an analysis from Mortgage Research Network, released in May.
The analysis estimated how long it would take to save for a 10% down payment in each state, factoring in home prices, average student loan balances and payments, and starting salaries for recent graduates in each state, using data from Zillow, EducationData.org, and the US Census Bureau.
The timeline to buy varies significantly by state, the study found. Hawaii had the longest average timeline at 17.8 years, while West Virginia had the shortest at 4.9 years.
Tim Lucas, lead analyst and editor at Mortgage Research, highlighted Florida as an interesting case because it's normally thought of as an affordable place to live. The average home price is just over $400,000; however, average starting salaries — $58,009 — are below the national average of $64,598, according to Mortgage Research.
"Yes, the home prices are reasonably affordable, like $400,000 per our data, but you have lower starting salaries and higher student debt, so that offsets any kind of affordability," Lucas told BI.
Gen Z mostly wants to live where the jobs are, but that's expensive
Bhasin has friends in San Francisco who pay up to $3,500 a month in rent, she said, but that's the price of living in the city.
Christopher Tyson, president of the National Community Stabilization Trust, said the city is a popular place for recent graduates.
"If you're in DC, or San Francisco, or Los Angeles, or New York, this is where the entry-level jobs are — but they're also extremely inflated, hyperinflated markets," Tyson told BI.
"You could be making a good salary, but still not be able to afford rent," he continued. "And if you want to put yourself on a path to purchase, you may have to live with a parent or whatnot."
Tyson noted that it's not easy for a lot of people to afford buying a home right now, but it's especially hard for younger generations just starting careers with no equity and little savings. To build up that buying power, sacrifices might have to be made.
Bhasin lives at home, rarely eats out, and quit drinking all to help save for a home, sacrifices she believes are necessary to get what she wants: a home in California.
About 40% of 18- to 30-year-olds lived with at least one parent in 2023, and according to an April Pew Research Center analysis, Vallejo, California, in the Bay Area, had the highest percentage of 25- to 34-year-olds living with their parents at 33%.
"I just got into that mode of, 'I want to be an adult,' and I want to make sacrifices and I want to be the healthiest version of myself and set myself up on the path of my dreams," Bhasin said.
"I do want to buy something in my 20s before I hit 30 because if I've saved appropriately, I should be able to," she added. "I don't want to be 35 and be still saving up for a home."
