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If renting an apartment in New York costs an arm and a leg, buying a home in the city comes at the expense of all four limbs and one's will to live. Real estate prices have soared over the past two decades, leaving millennials who are hoping to buy a home with fewer options than the generations preceding them.
A new study from Adobo dug into home-buying trends among people under the age of 35 in markets across the country and came to some pretty interesting conclusions. Aside from the already obvious fact that real estate is disgustingly cheaper in almost every other market in the country, the study found that the New York metropolitan area has one of the lowest millennial homeownership rates in the country at 19.8 percent.
Nationwide, roughly 32 percent of millennials are homeowners, and that figure is upward of 40 percent in markets like Des Moines, Iowa and Grand Rapids, Michigan. But Gothamites, who are forced to reckon with everything from rising home prices, high student loan debts and expensive costs of living, the path to owning real estate is not so simple.
Adobo looked into the median income among millennials in the 100 largest markets across the country and compared it to the average cost of homes bought by members of the generation in each area. The study then calculated how long it would take to afford a 20 percent down payment on that average home price if one saved 15 percent of their income. For New Yorkers, the answer is 22 years.
If you're an average New Yorker, get ready for more than two decades of saving before you're given the keys to your own property in the city. Granted, there's always the chance that you could make a fortune as an entrepreneur or an actor. For the rest of us, the grind to pay the rent isn't going away any time soon.