Perennially offered the short end of the stick, the pandemic turned out to be a double-edged sword for millennials. While some moved home, many were able to save up and come out of COVID-19 twice as wealthy as they were before it. This coincided with the generation reaching peak homebuying age, and the second year of the pandemic saw the beginning of a baby boom, as nearly half of the generation caught the fever of the age-old American ambition to move to the suburbs. But millennials might as well cue the sad Charlie Brown music and slink away when they look at the current state of the housing market. Massive student loans, the Great Recession, and a cost of living that outpaces their salaries, all keep this generation unable to build wealth like their parents and grandparents. And to top it off, one of the country’s leading housing-focused economists, herself a millennial, has crunched the numbers and found the ugly truth: That millennials’ parents, the boomers who seemed to get all the economic breaks of the last 50 years, are stealing all the starter homes and making them retirement homes instead.
Covering housing for at least 10 years, Ali Wolf has steadily ascended to the role of chief economist for Zonda, a distributor of housing market data and consulting. A millennial herself, Wolf has personal experience of what her generation is up against, as she lives in southern California, a state that personifies America’s housing shortage and an ensuing generational clash.
