When Kelsey Brown and her husband were searching for a house to buy in 2021, every offer they put in was above the asking price.
Five years later, they’re both in their 30s with a second child on the way but aren’t sure when — or where — they’ll be able to afford to move on from their Millcreek, Utah, home.
"Buying when we did was challenging in its own way, but it wasn't necessarily a financial challenge in the way it's feeling today," Brown told The Salt Lake Tribune.
Brown and her husband are among an increasing number of millennials who own their home instead of renting — there was a 74% increase in Generation Y-owned households between 2018 and 2023, according to a RentCafe and Yardi Matrix analysis of federal Census and labor data.
Several millennials who bought or refinanced in that time period told The Salt Lake Tribune through a survey and interviews that their path to homeownership depended on a combination of timing, income, location and luck.
And for those who managed to buy, today’s high prices and mortgage rates are making the move out of a starter home difficult.
More millennials own than rent in dozens of cities
Nationally, the number of millennial-owned households increased from about 7 million in 2018 to 12.4 million in 2023.
Though that’s still shy of the 12.6 million millennial households that rented in 2023, ownership outpaced renting in 82 of the 107 cities included in the analysis.
That included Ogden, Provo and Salt Lake City — and the latter two flipped from having millennials who mostly rent to majority homeowners.
Ogden and Provo even have almost the highest homeownership rates among Gen Y at 68.3% and 67.2%, respectively. Only Grand Rapids, Michigan, surpassed them with a rate of 68.5%.
The Salt Lake Tribune
Homeownership increased in all three Utah cities for two key reasons, said Doug Ressler, manager for business intelligence with Yardi Matrix, a business intelligence and market research platform for commercial real estate
Ogden, Provo and Salt Lake City all had strong income and job growth, he said, and home prices increased a manageable amount in Ogden and Provo.
Ressler points to Ogden as the winner for now because the typical home price is lower than the national average.
“If I were to be saving my pennies and trying to buy a home, and I had to come up with 20% down, Ogden looks very attractive,” he said.
Provo could be a “dark horse,” he said, because of growing incomes, local government programs to help buyers and home prices that look primed to drop.
Feeling ‘a little bit of the squeeze’ in starter home
Millennials who bought during the five years in the study pointed to lower home prices along with another advantage: Exceptionally low mortgage rates.
Interest rates were below 3% when Brown and her husband bought their home, and prices were “drastically” increasing but hadn’t peaked yet.
As they saw prices rising, she said, they stopped looking at townhomes they’d stay in for a few years and upped their budget to buy a single-family home they could keep for five to ten years.
“We’re five years into homeownership and thinking about how much longer we need to be saving and building equity to be able to move,” she said — and whether they’ll be able to stay in the Salt Lake Valley.
They’ve renovated their current home, including adding a bathroom. They also stretch their space when possible, like a shared office space and a guest room that doubles as a workout space.
“We already feel a little bit of the squeeze in our house,” Brown said, but the squeeze of the home market means they need to make compromises to stay for now.
‘Definitely an aspect of luck’
Cynthia Lew also had good timing and circumstances when she bought her Murray, Utah, townhome in 2019. She was 34 with a good job and didn’t have student debt because of scholarships and subsidized tuition at Brigham Young University.
She’s grateful that she’s not renting because of the stability, but said she would like more outdoor space and a neighborhood with more trees — if she could afford it in the current market.
Rick Egan // The Salt Lake Tribune
“I’m stuck in this house until I get a lot more money somehow,” she said.
Staying put for “the foreseeable future” is Daphne Pringle’s reality, too.
She and her husband bought their home in Liberty Wells in the fall of 2017 and refinanced in February 2020.
“We signed the refinance on a Thursday, and the world shut down the following Monday,” she said — and they’re not sure they could have bought their home six months after that.
Their home has "a bunch of equity," she said, but it isn't enough to overcome record home prices and high mortgage rates.
They jokingly thank their “terrible” landlord from years ago for making them look to buy when they did, she said, because the timing was fortunate.
“It’s kind of lucky,” Pringle said. “There’s definitely an aspect of luck to it.”
This story was produced by The Salt Lake Tribune and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
