Here’s How Gen-Z Can Become Homeowners

My parents were in their 20s when they bought their first home. It was the 1950s, Midcentury Modern, (my mother’s favorite furniture style) was just modern, and the house, a Dutch colonial in Brooklyn with four bedrooms, one full bath and two half baths, cost them about $25,000. That would be about $285,000 today, adjusted for inflation.

It was a perfect home for a family of that era, with a finished basement for kids to play in during the winter and a side yard for outdoor games in the warmer months. That mattered more than the whole family sharing one bathroom at the end of the hall, not uncommon in the decades before ‘master suites’ came to dominate home plans. It was located in a safe, walkable neighborhood with good schools too.