They waited out the pandemic boom. They saved longer, rented longer, delayed longer, and watched the typical first-time homebuyer age climb to a record 40. Now, the buyers who did everything right are running into a new problem: The Northeast just became the fastest-growing region for million-dollar starter homes in the country.
It’s especially imperfectly timed for millennials entering their peak household spending years and beginning to form their own families (or at least try to).
A Zillow report published Monday counts a record 242 U.S. cities where starter homes cost $1 million or more—triple the 80 cities that cleared that mark before the pandemic, and up from 226 a year ago.
The share of first-time buyers has fallen to half the historical norm. For millennial parents in the Northeast—now in their late thirties and early forties, often with kids, hunting for more space—the numbers have a specific shape.
New Jersey had just one million-dollar starter city before the pandemic. Now it has 26. New York used to have 12; now it has 41. The two states added 15 cities to the list in the past year alone—faster growth than anywhere else in the country. The New York City metro area now leads all with 63 cities where a starter home runs $1 million or more.
