US Housing Market Challenges Drive Creative Solutions for Homeownership

After several exasperating Zillow searches through Portland, Oregon’s increasingly expensive housing market, Gaby Colón and Daniel Quebral scrapped their plans for a traditional home and embraced the open road, buying a 315-square-foot home on wheels.

“Rent is crazy right now, and housing prices are even worse,” Colón says. “We just wanted to get out of the rat race, and we wanted stability.”

Colón, 27, and Quebral, 33, are part of a staggering trend—educated, employed Americans who are struggling to buy a home, a goal made ever more difficult by an inflated housing market. Nishu Sood, a principal at the housing research firm John Burns Research and Consulting, notes that in the decade since 2015, inflation rose 37 percent, incomes rose 45 percent, and the cost of buying a home has gone up a whopping 115 percent (by comparison, renting an apartment has risen 43 percent). The national average price for a starter home was $292,950 in 2024, up from $190,559 in 2019, according to realtor.com.

With housing costs far outpacing wages, starter homes—typically defined as houses that are priced in the lower third of the market—are increasingly elusive. According to the National Association of Realtors, the average age of first-time buyers has hit 40 years old, a troubling sign that one of the traditional markers of adulthood is being postponed.

Analysts attribute the problem to a perfect storm: a skyrocketing demand for houses during and just following the pandemic, the millennial generation’s entry into the housing market, and rising mortgage rates.

“When inventory levels fall, the lower price point feels more of the squeeze because it’s the price point that more people can afford,” explains Hannah Jones, senior economist at realtor.com. “Once mortgage rates rise, more buyers get funneled into that lower end.”

Those higher rates are also forcing families currently in starter homes to delay moving to larger properties, compounding the shortage of entry-level options.

“It’s remarkable just how severely that $300,000 and under section of the market has compressed,” says Jones, noting that in 2016, nearly 61 percent of active listings were priced at $300,000 or below. Meanwhile, from January to April 2026, $300,000 homes accounted for just 31 percent of the market.

Laxer zoning policies, Jones notes, may provide some relief by, say, promoting new construction on smaller lots, which would increase density and supply, and offer more options for buyers. But digging our way out of the problem is a long-term solution. For committed buyers now, the market is forcing creative measures, with some choosing tiny homes, opting for real estate in less expensive markets, or joining forces with friends or family to purchase multi-unit dwellings.

“Buyers are still buying homes. Obviously, they’re much slower paced than during the pandemic or even pre-pandemic, but they’re finding ways to make it happen,” says Jones. “By and large, people consider homeownership to still be a significant part of the American dream.”

This story is part of The Future of Home, a collaboration between the editors of WIRED and Architectural Digest to help you understand what “home” will look like tomorrow and beyond.

The Corporate Landlord Experience

While sales prices have increased disproportionately, renting remains a more accessible option in much of the country. That relative affordability is prompting some would-be buyers to sign leases instead, a more attainable but often deeply frustrating solution, and one that leaves them unable to accumulate wealth at the pace their parents’ and grandparents’ generations did.

“It feels like we should be investing in a home and building equity, and having that going into retirement, but that’s just not even an option for us,” says Mike Odom, 45.

Odom and his wife Christy, 40, moved into the idyllically named Rainbow Lakes neighborhood in Boynton Beach, Florida two years ago, wanting to raise their now 10-year-old son in a neighborhood that Odom says “goes all out” for Halloween and Christmas.

“We were super excited when our house became available,” says Odom, who works in dental sales and marketing.

Their experience quickly soured. The Odoms rent from Invitation Homes, a multi-billion dollar company founded by private equity firm Blackstone whose inventory includes approximately 86,000 homes. Housing advocates say that companies like them have been scooping up starter homes, which may be causing inventory to drop and prices to soar.

The Odoms are among the many frustrated tenants renting from large corporations who they say defer maintenance and help inflate the rental market, an issue that’s prompted bipartisan lawmakers to propose the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act. If enacted, it would restrict large institutional investors from buying single-family homes, theoretically opening the market to more individual ownership.

But economist Sood notes that large institutional investors, defined in the bill as companies owning more than 350 single-family homes, account for only 0.7% of single-family owned and rented homes in the entire country, and 5 percent of single-home rentals.

“If there’s one thing everyone agrees on, it is that prices are too high, because there haven’t been enough homes built over time,” he says. “The anti-institutional sentiment got expressed in this bill, but it went a little too far: It [initially] mandated that even if you build new homes, you have to sell them within seven years, and that [would have] the effect of basically freezing capital.”

Those are abstract concerns for people like Odom, who want to invest in the improvement of their homes, despite not owning them. For Odom, it’s been a delicate balance of tenant and owner responsibilities. When the cable holding their garage door snapped and the PIN code required for their front door stopped working, Odom says Invitation Homes was slow to send maintenance workers to fix the problems—and all requests must go through an 24/7 online portal or app. When his property was plagued by ants, the exterminators Invitation Homes hired were unsuccessful, so Odom removed the lawn abutting the house and relandscaped it with flower beds and rocks. (Invitation Homes’s website states that interior pest control is the renter’s responsibility.)

“It quickly went from us being really excited to thinking ‘this could be a potential money pit,’” he says. “There were a lot of things that Invitation Homes said: ‘Well, it’s cosmetic, it’s not hindering functionality, so it’s not anything that we’re going to fix. You can just document it and we’ll make sure you don’t get charged for it when you move out.’ ”

The Odoms initially paid $2,700 to rent their three-bedroom, two-bathroom home but they also contended with other fees: $40 each month for a smart-home system; $120 annually for monthly air filters. After two years, Invitation Homes wanted to raise their monthly rent by $450, an increase the Odoms said they couldn’t afford.

The couple hoped to move out, but many rentals in the area within their price range were also owned by Invitation Homes. They’ve been able to negotiate a lower price and are staying put for now, paying nearly $3,000 in rent and associated fees each month while not being able to buy in an impenetrable local housing market.

“I don’t mind doing a lot of this stuff myself, if it’s going into the equity of the home,” Odom says. “But when you’re paying a huge corporation’s bills, you’re doing the work for them.”

Like Odom, a 40-something office manager renting in Paulding County, Georgia, who asked to remain anonymous, dreams of buying her home, but says the market has made it impossible. So she also rents from Invitation Homes, scowling as she walks on the “very inexpensive-looking, awful” beige low-pile carpet that lines her staircases, hallways, and bedrooms—which was installed by the prior owner, and she says she would replace it if she owned the unit.

Aside from cosmetic plans that she’s putting off for now, she says she had to repeatedly follow up for air conditioning to be fixed, and has been frustrated by the third-party vendors that Invitation Homes has sent.

When she moved in nine years ago, rent on her three-bedroom, two-bathroom split-level home was $1,050 a month. Now it’s about $1,650. The renter says that even with the frustrations and indignities, she is grateful to have a big back yard on a quiet street. Still, she ruefully calls her relatively low rent “bronze handcuffs.”

“We’re very fortunate. I pay so much less in rent than what people are paying for mortgages for the same size house or less,” she says. “I’m able to pay my rent on time, and I don’t have to come out of pocket for insurance beyond my renter’s insurance. I’m ok with that for now.”

Invitation Homes says they work to address maintenance concerns in a timely manner, putting the most urgent requests first. Parts and vendor availability, and the scope of the project can all affect work timelines.

A spokesperson for Invitation Homes says, “As homeownership has become increasingly challenging for many Americans due to affordability and inventory constraints, professionally managed single-family rental homes offer an important option that provides space, flexibility, and access to neighborhoods where many people want to live. We are proud to provide a living experience that combines high-quality homes and professional service for the families who choose to lease with us.”

Multigenerations to the Rescue

San Francisco’s notoriously inflated housing market turned into a boon for the Kordesch family.

When Kristina Kordesch, 43, an ICU nurse practitioner, and her husband Carlos Mattei, 46, an information technology specialist, started looking to buy their first home in the city, they prioritized neighborhoods with good public schools for their now four-year-old twins. They also wanted to live in a diverse community with easy walkability to restaurants and shops.

Unfortunately, their $1.2 million budget did not match their desires.

“Housing in San Francisco is tough,” she says. “Either you’re in a really suboptimal neighborhood, or you have to go really far, and then there’s a long commute.”

At the same time, Kordesch’s retired parents, Sharon, 72, and Al, 77, were sick of the constant hunt for street parking near their San Francisco condo. They wanted both a garage and a garden.

“They knew we were looking, and they were thinking about moving too, so we started to explore what it would be like to get a two-unit house,” Kordesch says. They all quickly realized that the market was less competitive for multi-unit homes, finding the square-footage price about $800, rather than approximately $1,000 for single-family homes.

The Kordesches are part of a larger trend. According to a May report by realtor.com, multi-generational households now comprise 4.5 percent of owner-occupied homes in the US, and 17 percent of all buyers were purchasing multi-generational homes in 2025, per the National Association of Realtors.

While nationally those homes tend to cost more, in the San Francisco area, they’re in higher supply, accounting for 17.4 percent of the local market.

“It gave us a lot more options,” Kordesch says. “I think not a lot of people have someone that they want to buy with. You need to have someone that you can financially join with, and that’s an incredibly vulnerable thing.”

The four of them held meetings in coffee shops, making lists of pros, cons, and non-negotiables, thinking about what would best accommodate six people spanning 73 years.

Working with an agent from Nestment, a company that specializes in advising first-time home buyers, they reviewed dozens of homes and bought a $2.2 million red brick 1920s Victorian-style home in the city’s Richmond District neighborhood. The younger couple and their children live in 2,000 square feet on the upper two floors, and the seniors live in a 1,200-square-foot unit below.

They liked that it was in a family-friendly neighborhood, and that the streets were flat, making it easy for Sharon Kordesch to take walks. They loved the crown molding, hardwood floors, and combining what Kordesch calls “old world charm … with our modern furniture and modern kids.”

Nestment introduced them to lenders who were familiar with multi-unit purchases that combined cash and mortgage, and with sales that involved multiple buyers. The grandparents paid 40% in cash, while Kordesch and Mattei contributed 60 percent in combined mortgage and cash.

The arrangement sounds idyllic, but there are learning curves, certainly, with the younger couple having to teach their children that the two residences are separate, and that they must knock on their grandparents’ front door rather than just barge in. Similarly, the four adults have a text chain to address any domestic issues, and Kristina has sometimes had to remind her parents that she is a capable adult in her 40s.

“My mom hears me leave for work at 5:30 in the morning and then hears my husband alone with the kids, and sees me come home at 8 pm. I think they get stressed out by our lives, and they want to soften things for us,” Kristina says. “It’s been an interesting exercise in my telling them: ‘You gotta just let us get through this phase of life.’ ”

Boundary issues aside, Kordesch says she is amazed by her family’s good fortune.

“It just felt like such a long shot to be able to buy a home in San Francisco,” she says. “I feel so excited, proud and lucky that we did this.”

Family ties also proved essential to Matt Scharboneau, 33, and his wife Elissa, 34.

After the birth of their first child two summers ago, they budgeted about $250,000 for their house hunt, and were “completely discouraged” by the market in Madison, Wisconsin.

“When we saw that the prices were relative to our expectations, and how misaligned our mental budget was, we just kind of stopped,” says Matt, a learning and development specialist. “Looking at listings became like its own genre of a horror film.”

Both native Michiganders, they were feeling the pull of family, and they got spectacularly lucky: his parents were downsizing and wanting to sell their four-bedroom, three-bathroom home in the Detroit suburb of Trenton, Michigan.

Matt’s parents asked for $330,000, more than the couple had initially budgeted when they began house hunting in Madison, but under market for the value of the house. And so the couple found themselves living in Matt’s childhood home, repainting what had been his parents’ bedroom from beige to a cheery yellow. Making the move even more appealing, Matt’s sister and her family live next door, in the home Matt’s father grew up in.

“I swear we’re not a cult,” Matt jokes.

A few months ago, they transformed Matt’s boyhood bedroom into the nursery for their second child, now three months old.

“We were so lucky not to have the stressors of house hunting,” he says. “And my parents