Is It Possible to Buy a House in Your 20s? Yes, but Only With Some Help. (Published 2023) (2024)

Last year, while Whitney Buehler was in Croatia on her honeymoon, the back of her mind was home in Atlanta gearing up for a summer of house hunting.

Ms. Buehler, 25, and her husband, Joey, 27, didn’t like renting, and had discussed the idea of buying a home for two years before getting married.

Throughout the pandemic, they had put aside around $40,000 in savings and kept an eye on the chaotic housing market. With their wedding out of the way, they finally had the time and energy to dive into their search head-on. After touring 15 houses, the Buehlers placed three offers before one was accepted.

The property was a fixer-upper in the Ormewood Park neighborhood of Atlanta’s Eastside. It cost $389,000 and ticked all of their boxes. It was right off the BeltLine, a network of trails that Mr. Buehler uses to bike safely to work. It had a verdant yard filled with tulip poplars and three majestic oaks. It had two bathrooms. The couple moved in last August.

The Buehlers are part of an enviable cohort of young adults who manage to become homeowners before the age of 30. Reaching such a milestone can feel like a tall order these days. The typical age of a first-time home buyer is 36, according to a recent survey from the National Association of Realtors. When the survey was first taken in 1981, the median age for first-time buyers was 29. Home prices surged in the first two years of the Covid-19 pandemic, and in recent months fell only slightly from those peaks.

The cost of renting has skyrocketed in many cities, eroding the ability of tenants to save. Add other forces — like high student loan debt and wages that haven’t kept up with inflation — and it’s no surprise that young adults appear to be renting for longer and becoming homeowners later, if ever. But against these odds, many are still making it happen. Twenty-nine percent of adults between the ages of 18 and 29 owned their homes in 2021, the Federal Reserve found.