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For millennials, buying a house can seem like an impossible task.
With student loan debt on their heels and a generally unfavorable housing market with high prices and relatively expensive mortgage rates, the odds of landing a reasonable home in a place they love can feel bleak.
Still, buying a home is easier in some US cities than in others.
Personal finance site SmartAsset analyzed data for Americans ages 25 to 44 who took out new mortgages in 2022. It ranked the 40 biggest US metropolitan areas by the percentage of millennials living there who bought a home in 2022, while also looking at those cities' median property values, interest rates, and incomes.
Of the top 15 cities where the largest share of the millennial population bought homes, nine were in the South, five were in the Midwest, and none were in the Northeast or on the West Coast.
The Raleigh-Cary metro area of North Carolina had the highest percentage of millennials who became homeowners, at 6.5%. The median property value in the metro area is $445,000, while the median income is $123,000.
Cities in the South, including Raleigh, North Carolina, are attracting young movers fed up with the big, coastal cities, BI has previously reported. The relative affordability of these southern cities can make the decision to leave a city like New York or San Francisco less painful.
North Carolina had two other metro areas in the top 15 for millennial homebuyers.
The Charlotte-Concord-Gastonia metro area, which extends into South Carolina, saw 5.8% of its millennials purchase a home in 2022, with a median property value of $405,000.
The Virginia Beach-Norfolk-Newport News metro area, which stretches into North Carolina, had 5.2% of its millennials buy a home, with a $325,000 median property value.
On the flip side, less than 1% of millennials in the San Francisco area, which includes Oakland and Berkeley, purchased a home in 2022. The new millennial homeowner had a median income of $300,000 — and the median home price was $1.59 million.
The glaring difference between San Francisco and the cities that topped SmartAsset's list is affordability. Some millennials are just starting families, and southern cities usually offer more bang for their buck when buying a home.
Take the metropolitan area that includes Nashville, which took second place in the rankings. Six percent of millennials there became homeowners in 2022. The metro area has one of the highest median property values, at $455,000, but it's still hundreds of thousands of dollars less than San Francisco's. Nashville's median income was $110,000.
The area around Atlanta, which includes Sandy Springs and Alpharetta in Georgia, issued the most mortgages to millennials at over 83,000, more than double the median for the 40 cities SmartAsset considered.
Austin landed 10th on the list of top cities for millennial homebuyers. Pengyu Cheng, a program manager for a tech company, moved to Austin from San Francisco in 2021. He rented in California but was able to buy in Texas.
"Living in California has always been expensive," Cheng, a millennial, told BI in 2023. "I knew that when my wife and I eventually expanded our family, we wouldn't be able to afford San Francisco or the Bay Area in general — even though we both earn good salaries."
