Maria Torres was 32 when she finally gave up on buying a home in Phoenix. Not because she hadn’t saved — she had, for six years, cutting out dinners and skipping vacations. It was the math. A modest three-bedroom house in her neighborhood had climbed past $480,000, and interest rates, while softer than their 2023 peak, still made monthly payments feel like a second rent.
“I did everything right,” she said. “And I’m still on the outside looking in.”
Maria isn’t alone. Across the United States, the homeownership dream — long the cornerstone of middle-class identity — has quietly slipped out of reach for millions of Americans under 40. The National Association of Realtors reports that first-time buyers now make up less than 24% of all home purchases, the lowest share on record. Median home prices nationally hover around $415,000, while median household incomes have not kept pace.
The causes are layered. A decade of underbuilding after the 2008 financial crisis left the country millions of housing units short. When the pandemic sparked a migration wave to Sun Belt cities, prices in places like Austin, Nashville, and Tampa shot up by 40% or more in under two years. Add in corporate investors purchasing single-family homes at scale, and the supply crunch deepened.
In Congress, proposals are multiplying — from expanding first-time buyer tax credits to incentivizing municipalities to rezone for denser housing. A bipartisan housing bill passed the Senate last fall and is working its way through a fractured House. Whether it arrives soon enough to matter is another question.
Back in Phoenix, Maria has pivoted. She’s now considering moving to a smaller city in Ohio, where a comparable house costs $210,000. It’s not the life she pictured, but it’s a life she can afford.
“America is supposed to be the place where hard work pays off,” she said. “I’m still waiting for that part.”
