Don’t give up on your dream of buying a house … yet. Seven states offer a path to homeownership that takes less than seven years, according to a study released Wednesday by Phoenix-based cabinet manufacturer Highland Cabinetry. “Homeownership is slipping out of reach for most Americans,” a Highland Cabinet spokesperson told The Independent in an email. “The median house price hit $436,000 this year, but wages are not keeping up. A teacher making $60,000 in an expensive state might never save enough for a down payment if they're already spending $40,000 on rent and bills.”Teachers and those in five other professions that Highland analyzed – nurse, pharmacist, accountant, computer programmer and police/sheriff’s deputy – have the best shot at owning a home in Iowa. The Hawkeye State’s median home price of $228,000 means that the average time to homeownership is just 5.6 years, according to the study. One other state has an average time under six years, and five others can get the average person into a home in less than seven years. Five of the seven states for fastest homeownership are found in one region (Getty Images)The average path to homeownership in Oklahoma is 5.8 years, followed by Pennsylvania (6.3 years), Ohio (6.3 years), Illinois (6.5 years), Indiana (6.8 years) and North Dakota (6.9 years).Teachers can find the quickest way to a home in Pennsylvania, where the average educator can save up enough to buy a home in 8.1 years.Nurses can get into a home in 5.3 years in Oklahoma, while Iowa’s 5.6 years is the fastest a law enforcement officer can get into a home in the United States. Highland’s study provides hope to a consumer base that is quickly giving up on the dream of homeownership. The average sales price of a home – $514,600, per the Federal Reserve – remained near all-time highs in the first three months of the year. Mortgage rates have stayed above 6 percent for all but one week over the past four years, making home loans more costly than any point from 2009 to 2021.As a result, around 15 percent of the country’s under-30 population had already given up on the idea of ever buying a home by the end of 2025. Since late 2025, President Donald Trump has floated several ideas to bring down the cost of homeownership. President Trump has proposed several ways to make it more affordable to buy a home (Reuters)The president pitched a 50-year mortgage, which would greatly reduce how much a monthly mortgage payment is but would add tens of thousands of dollars of interest compared to a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage. He also considered using the government to buy billions of dollars in mortgage bonds to bring down interest rates, but experts believed that move would have only a temporary impact on mortgage rates.