Gen Zers are so desperate to get a home of their own they’re increasingly willing to make trade-offs—even if it means putting opportunities on the back burner and moving back in with mom and dad.
Around 28% of Gen Z adults say they would choose their dream home over their dream job, according to new Harris Poll data commissioned by Coldwell Banker Real Estate.
About 92% of the young generation who aren’t homeowners want to buy one day—even if it means setting aside other big life goals. And to make it happen amid a stifling cost-of-living crisis, many are settling down in their childhood bedrooms; more than three-quarters of Gen Zers have moved in or considered living with their parents or in-laws to save up for a home.
They’re part of a growing number of young Americans putting off traditional milestones of adulthood, as living with family becomes a more practical and increasingly culturally accepted way to get ahead financially.
“Gen Z is telling us loud and clear that owning a home is still the milestone that says you’ve made it,” Mary Lee Blaylock, president of Coldwell Banker Affiliates, tells Fortune in a written comment. “Many are moving back in with family and making real sacrifices now because they see homeownership as the foundation for the life they want to build.”
Despite how out-of-reach homeownership can look, it’s still an integral achievement for people to feel like they’ve made it; around 85% surveyed said owning a home is part of the American Dream for most Americans, unchanged from 2025, according to the Coldwell report. Knowing how difficult it is to buy, some young families are already planning ahead so their kids don’t face the same hurdles. Around 85% of Gen Z and 82% of millennial parents have started saving for a child’s home down-payment, or at least considered it.
Why Gen Z and young millennials are delaying their move-out
A record 25.2 million U.S. adults under the age of 35 lived with their parents in 2025—representing about one in three young adults—according to a 2026 report from Realtor.com. It was even higher than the pandemic-era surge, when many budding professionals returned home to ride out the pandemic with their loved ones.
However, it doesn’t mean that Gen Zers and young millennials are jobless and mooching off their family resources.
In fact, around 70% of 25 to 34-year-olds who still live at home with their parents are actually employed, according to the report. Plus, around 72% of young adults who live with their parents say they contribute financially to the household in some sort of way, according to 2024 data from Pew Research. About 46% contribute toward rent or the mortgage, while 65% put in money towards the family groceries, utilities, or other household expenses.
But many have found they can’t fly the coop just yet, as pay increases have failed to keep pace with skyrocketing housing costs.
In 2025, the median American home price was $430,000, up 34.4% from 2019, according to the Realtor.com report. Meanwhile, average monthly rent shot up by 17.9% to $1,673. And a housing shortage of roughly 4 million homes is only exacerbating the issue.
Instead of kicking back, most workers are postponing their move-out plans thanks to an affordability crisis pinching the wallets of everyday Americans. And as professionals on the lowest rung of the corporate totem pole, their rock-bottom salaries, job instability, and lack of savings may be keeping them home.
The American Dream has changed: ‘We are going to start looking a lot more like Europe’
For younger Americans, moving back in with their parents is no longer necessarily a temporary detour on the path to independence. Instead, it may be a longer-term lifestyle shift, as the financial and cultural barriers to multigenerational living continue to fall.
“Now since rates have been going up and affordability remains very stretched, we’re seeing [multigenerational living] increase,” Ivy Zelman, cofounder and executive vice president at housing research firm Zelman, a Walker & Dunlop Company, said during a roundtable discussion Fortune attended earlier this year. “We assume that it’s going to stay fairly stable as we continue into the second half of the decade.”
The proportion of adults in their twenties and thirties living at home has continued to rise in recent years, and shows no sign of letting up. Back in 1980, only around 15% of these younger adults opted to live with their parents.
Now, around 22.4% of Gen Zers and millennials are bunkering down with their families, according to recent data from Zelman. And the real estate firm predicts that number won’t budge by 2030. Echoing the Realtor.com data, Zelman also found that young adults face a cost-of-living crisis and lackluster salary increases; only 44% of 20- to 39-year-olds could afford their median local rent. And beyond affordability, the firm noted that a cultural change is underway.
“We also believe that there’s a secular shift in how people are living,” Zelman continued, explaining that when you look “at young adults today that are happy or content living with their parents, the negative stigma is really no longer prevalent. We are going to start looking a lot more like Europe: multigenerational living.”
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