National Generational Homebuyer Trends

Baby boomers have swallowed the market millennials used to own — and it's an equity story, not a demand story.

Boomers went from 33% of buyers in 2019 to 42% in 2024, overtaking millennials for the first time in over a decade, while millennials fell from a 43% peak (2021) to 29% . Gen X has stayed a steady ~24% throughout — the generation least disrupted by the rate shock. Gen Z is still barely in the market at 3%.

The 2024 snapshot underneath that swing:

Generation	Share of Purchases	Median Down Payment %	Avg. Purchase Price	Mortgage Rate Context
Gen Z	3%	~8%1	~$276,0001	~4.9% average rate on current loan balance (bought into 2022–23's higher-rate market)14
Millennials	29%	~12%2	~$504,0002	~4.0% average rate on current balance (many bought/refinanced in 2020–21 near record lows)4
Gen X	24%	~17%	~$543,000	~4.0% average rate on current balance, largely from 2020–21 refinancing4
Boomers	42%	~31%3	~$497,000	No single average disclosed, but comparable back-book rate given heavy 2020–21 refinancing; roughly half pay all-cash, so a rate doesn't apply at all4

What's actually driving the shift:

Boomers are buying with home equity, not paychecks. Nearly half of older boomers and 40% of younger boomers paid all cash in 2024 , funded by decades of appreciation on homes now often mortgage-free. That's why their down payment share (~31%, blended) dwarfs every other generation's — it's not caution, it's converted equity. It also makes them rate-insensitive, which is why boomer purchase volume kept climbing straight through the 2022–24 rate shock that froze everyone else.
Millennials are the "rate-lock" casualty, and it shows in their falling share. Millennials cratered from 43% (2021, when rates sat near 3%) to 28% in 2022 the moment rates repriced, and never fully recovered — 29% by 2024 . The generation locked into cheap 2020–21 mortgages is now the generation least willing to give that rate up and trade into a new one, which compounds inventory scarcity for the millennials still trying to buy.
Gen X is the quiet stable middle — steady ~24% share, highest household incomes of any generation ($130,000 median in 2023) , and now the generation most likely to buy multigenerational (21% did in 2024) as they absorb aging parents and boomerang adult kids simultaneously.
Gen Z is priced out at the entry point, not disinterested. Their down payments run under 8% — the lowest of any cohort — and they lean hardest on FHA (~30% of Gen Z loans) precisely because they have neither savings depth nor a prior home's equity to draw on. They're also the only generation whose current mortgage rate is higher than average, simply because they had no choice but to buy into the 2022–23 rate spike.

The mechanism tying it together: home-price growth has outrun income growth for younger buyers for years, and the 2022 rate shock then handed a second, larger advantage to whoever already owned — hence boomers pulling further ahead while millennials and Gen Z absorb both a higher price basis and, for new entrants, a higher rate.

Happy to break any of this down by first-time vs. repeat buyer, or size the boomer wealth transfer implications for the next five years.