America’s first-time homebuyer is now 40 years old. A shocking new report explains why

The dinner table in many family homes was a bit crowded again in 2025 as a record 25.2 million adults under the age of 35 were living with their parents, even more than the pandemic-era peak, according to a new report released Thursday by Realtor.com. While Ma’s meat loaf may be spectacular, that’s not the reason why so many young adults are sticking around the family nest. Rather, they don’t have anywhere affordable to go. About 70 of people ages 25 to 34 who live with their parents are employed, but they’re being priced out of both the rental and housing markets, figures from the Austin-based real estate site show. Combined with more than a decade of housing underproduction, these dynamics help 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, according to Hannah Jones, senior economist at Realtor.com. “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 tells Fast Company. “Every adult still in a childhood bedroom is a household not formed, a lease unsigned, a starter home unpurchased.” A SUPPLY ISSUE What’s holding would-be renters and homebuyers out of the market is a lack of affordable housing, Jones notes. Any improvement on that front will help the approximately one in three adults under 35 who are sharing a roof with a parent to finally fly the coop. The median listing price of a home has surged 34 since 2019, to 430,000 nationwide, while the median asking rent is up nearly 18 in that same period, to 1,673. If young adults are co-residing with parents as a deliberate strategy to accumulate enough money for a down payment, they might be able to jump into the housing market sooner than they otherwise could, Jones tells Fast Company. “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.” That’s because it seems some adults are increasingly unable to leave home until much later. The share of 30- to 34-year-olds living with a parent has nearly doubled over the past quarter-century—to a 12.7 co-residence rate in 2025 versus a 7.1 rate in 2000. Adults treading water at home in their late 20s then become the cohort in their early 30s who are unable to exit, Jones notes. “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.” MISSING OUT One interesting trend among adult children living with their parents well into their 30s is the divide between men and women. While the share of men between the ages of 18 and 24 is basically on par with the share of women, that changes as they age. For adults between 25 and 29 who still live with their parents, 57 are men, and that share jumps to nearly 61 among adults ages 30 to 34. Regardless of the characteristics of those adult children, the result has broader implications, Jones notes. “Adults living with parents represent latent buying power that hasn’t converted,” she says. “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.” Finally, there’s a real long-term cost in terms of wealth accumulation. 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. “Every year of delay narrows that window, and the compounding effect on lifetime financial security is significant,” Jones says.