Home ownership among young couples, is rather low — at least in comparison to last year. On a national scale, adults 35 years old or younger accounted for just one-third of home owners. In 2004, the highest peak in the country, home owners in that age bracket accounted for 43.6 percent.

The reduction, caused by the Great Recession and exacerbated today by barriers such as student debt, delayed marriages, and tight credit, has precluded as many as three million first-time home buyers from entering the real estate market in the last decade, some observers say, writes Caitlin McCabe in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

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Many millennials and lower-income shoppers are often stuck renting — or overpaying when they buy. Some entry-level buyers have delayed home purchases for so long that they are now diving straight into “mid-tier” homes after saving for a down payment for sometimes more than a decade.

In each zip code, entry-level homes for first-time buyers — defined here as $350,000 or less — were selected during the week that began Jan. 22 as examples of available starter homes. (Inventory can often fluctuate day to day.) At that price point, data show, entry-level homes are available only minimally — and sometimes not at all.
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