So you’re in your late 20’s or early 30’s, and you’re thinking about buying your first home somewhere in California. You scroll through housing websites and realize that you can’t afford a single listing.
Sound familiar? Well, you’re not alone.
All seven of the country’s major metro areas with the lowest homeownership rates for 25-to-34-year-olds are in California, a Bay Area News Group analysis of Census Bureau data from 2017 to 2021 has found. And the ripple effect is having a profound impact on more than just young people.
The metro area comprising Los Angeles and Orange counties, where only two out of 10 young adults ages 25-34 own their home, scored lowest in the country.
Santa Maria-Santa Barbara was just a fraction better with a young adult homeownership rate of 21%, followed by Santa Cruz-Watsonville (22.5%), San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara (22.8%), Salinas (23.3%), San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward (23.4%) and San Diego-Carlsbad (23.8%).
The analysis filtered out young people who live with their parents, only including young adults who were identified as the head of their household or were married to the head of their household.
Compare that with the Denver-Aurora-Lakewood, Colorado, metro area (39.7%) or Jacksonville, Florida, (37.8%) or Baltimore-Columbia-Towson, Maryland, where 42.9% of young adults owned their home. The Lake Erie city of Monroe, Michigan, population 20,000 and halfway between Detroit and Toledo, had the highest rate of young adult homeownership at 70.8%. The Inland Empire ranked 90th at 39%.
No California dreaming
Experts say that although declining young adult homeownership rates are a national phenomenon, California is faring particularly badly. One recent study published by UC Berkeley’s Terner Center for Housing Innovation found that by age 35, most U.S. residents had become homeowners. In California, it wasn’t until age 49.
Experts point to a variety of factors, like the student debt crisis and a delay in…
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