first-time buyers – A new Realtor.com report links record levels of young adults living with parents to higher rents, surging home prices, and long-running housing underproduction—pushing the typical first-time buyer from about 30 in recent decades to 40 today.
The bedroom door stays open longer than it used to. In 2025, a record 25.2 million adults under the age of 35 are living with their parents, even beyond the pandemic-era high—an uneasy sign that “just saving up” isn’t enough when the basic steps to adulthood keep getting more expensive.
Realtor.com released the new findings Thursday, and they land on a blunt economic reality: many young adults aren’t co-residing because they want to. Realtor.com senior economist Hannah Jones points to being priced out of both rental and housing markets as a central driver.
Jones says the shift helps explain why the typical first-time buyer is now 40 years old, up sharply from a decades-long norm of about 30 from the early 1980s through 2021.
“First-time buyers are entering the market later, in smaller numbers, and against significantly longer odds than any prior generation in the available data,” Jones told Fast Company. “Every adult still in a childhood bedroom is a household not formed, a lease unsigned, a starter home unpurchased.”
For people trying to move out, the bottleneck is plain: affordability. About 70% of people ages 25 to 34 who live with their parents are employed. Realtor.com’s figures show—but their paychecks aren’t insulating them from rising housing costs. The report underscores a supply problem as well, driven by more than a decade of housing underproduction.
The numbers on prices explain why leaving home is taking longer. The median listing price of a home has surged 34% since 2019, reaching $430,000 nationwide. Over the same period, the median asking rent is up nearly 18%, to $1,673.
That imbalance feeds a cycle. Jones notes that if some young adults are staying with parents as a deliberate strategy to accumulate enough money for a down payment. they may be able to enter the market sooner than they otherwise could. But she draws a sharper line for a different reality—when co-residence becomes a backstop.
“But if it’s less a financial strategy than a backstop, a way of staying above water rather than getting ahead, then the delay compounds rather than resolves,” Jones said.
The delay is showing up in the age data. The share of 30- to 34-year-olds living with a parent has nearly doubled over the past quarter-century. reaching a 12.7% co-residence rate in 2025 versus 7.1% in 2000. Jones describes how people can get stuck: adults who remain at home in their late 20s become the group that. in their early 30s. can’t exit.
“In that scenario, delayed entry doesn’t mean better-prepared buyers; it means a shrinking pool of buyers who can make it to the market at all,” she said.
There’s also a gender split in when co-residence happens. For adults between 25 and 29 who still live with their parents. 57% are men. a figure that rises to nearly 61% among adults ages 30 to 34. While those differences may reflect a mix of personal circumstances. Jones focuses on the economic consequence: housing demand that never turns into purchases.
“Adults living with parents represent latent buying power that hasn’t converted,” she said. “Until entry-level supply improves meaningfully, starter homes will continue to see limited turnover, keeping the first rung of the ladder out of reach for the next wave of would-be buyers.”
The report’s reach goes beyond today’s cost of moving out. It ties delay to wealth. Purchasing a home by the age of 30 is associated with a 22.5% higher net worth at age 50, compared with first-time homebuyers who are in their 40s, according to prior research from Realtor.com.
Jones puts it in personal terms—because each year changes the trajectory.
“Every year of delay narrows that window, and the compounding effect on lifetime financial security is significant,” she said.
With median home prices at $430. 000 nationwide and median rents at $1. 673. the report suggests the hardest part isn’t just waiting—it’s what happens to the market while would-be buyers are stuck on the outside. Each missed milestone means fewer households formed. fewer leases signed. and fewer starter homes changing hands. which in turn keeps the next generation facing the same locked doors.
Realtor.com first-time homebuyer housing affordability rental prices home prices housing underproduction young adults living with parents Hannah Jones net worth mortgage market