A big look at the state of housing in America: Boomers won’t sell, millennials can’t buy, and Gen Z gets to watch the whole thing sort itself out

Since the pandemic, hopeful homebuyers have grown accustomed to a certain narrative: An inventory squeeze and swathes of homeowners unwilling to move means demand for housing has vastly outpaced the supply of available homes. It’s a dynamic that could soon be put into reverse by the same demographic pressures transforming every other part of the U.S. economy. Last year, the U.S. housing supply deficit reached 4.03 million homes, with new housing construction slipping and high prices keeping younger potential buyers locked out of the market. Millennials and Gen Zers have had it worse in a housing market still dominated by baby boomers. The older generation still accounts for some 42% of purchases and 52% of sales, according to Realtor.com data, while the share of first-time homebuyers is only 21%, the lowest proportion in more than four decades. Chronically insufficient supply has collided with millennials and older Gen Zers aging closer to prime homebuying age, a confluence of factors that has pushed national home prices up 55% between 2020 and 2025, according to a report published Monday by the Mortgage Bankers’ Association (MBA). But a shifting demographic reality in the U.S.—that of an older population and a shrinking young base of homebuyers—might be enough to flip that narrative, at least for the bulk of Gen Z. Millennials, meanwhile, who have been patiently waiting for a home for years, are going to have to fight it out with each other for the scraps. The MBA paper forecasted housing prices to rise only 1% this year, down from a 4% hike as recently as 2024. Over the next two years, the organization expects home prices to flatline, bookending a turbulent and chaotic period for U.S. housing, and it might be all thanks to the country’s rapidly aging population and a shrinking cohort of younger homebuyers. Over the next two decades, household formation, the rate at which people move into new housing, will start slowing significantly, according to the MBA, softenin