28-year-old made 15 offers, went $65,000 over asking price and still got rejected: The housing market is ‘a slap in the face'It was June 2023, when U.S. homebuyers were scrambling to beat out rising mortgage rates and snatch up what they could from a limited number of units on the market. Amid, many buyers made all-cash offers. Lesko and Khalil, a New Jersey couple, had lost out on about 15 bids on properties in Monmouth County at that point.
Most members of the millennial generation entered adulthood during the 2008 financial crisis and aftermath. They faced a bleak job market, stagnant wages and mounting student debt, which hindered their ability to save. When communications professional Kelly Diehr, 31, and her husband started looking for a Denver-area home in January 2024, they figured a budget of $600,000 would go a long way. That was, after all, the
"We start looking and think, 'OK, we're making more than our parents, we should be able to get a better home than them right now,'" says Diehr."For $600,000, you'd think we'd be getting a turn-key home: three bedrooms, all-wood floors, two bathrooms and a decent backyard. And that is absolutely not the case."
The founder and CEO of a marketing and public relations company, Ochart was already a homeowner, having purchased a detached, two-bedroom house in San Antonio for roughly $275,000 in 2021. At that time, he was able to secure a 30-year fixed mortgage rate of 2.86% — a far cry from"The only reason I was able to accomplish that was the historically low mortgage rates," says Ochart, who now earns a net profit of about $100 per month renting out the home.
It feels"like a Catch-22," says Ochart:"You can afford places in cities that might not have job opportunities, but when you move to a bigger city with job opportunities, you're priced out." Grand Rapids' swift home price growth has squeezed out local buyers like Timothy Ham, 40, a veteran and network security engineer who had to relocate to Kalamazoo, an hour's drive away.Timothy Ham couldn't find an affordable property in his hometown of Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Americans now need to earn around $111,000 to afford a median-priced home with a 20% down payment — a staggering 50% increase over the past four years,. To keep up with those prices, 36% of millennial and younger homebuyers rely on family help to cover down payments, up from 18% in 2019, "We will need 1.8 million new housing units for about five consecutive years to remove the housing shortage deficit," says Lawrence Yun, chief economist at NAR. Until that gap is closed, experts expect prices to keep trending upwards.key part of the American Dream