Under 40 in Miami? The homebuying math keeps getting worse

Buying a home has gone from difficult to out-of-reach for a generation of young Floridians.

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The Miami metro area, which includes Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach, is one of the least affordable major metropolitan areas in the country, according to new data from Pew Research.

A combination of rising home prices, stagnant wages, stubbornly high mortgage rates, and the costs of property taxes and home insurance have locked many under-40 Floridian households out of homeownership.

Part of how Pew measures affordability is by comparing median household incomes to median home prices, which gives something called a price-to-income ratio.

Affordability is a spectrum, and Pew considers very affordable metro areas as having price-to-income ratios of less than 2.5. For instance, if the median income was $100,000, homes wouldn’t cost more than $250,000.

The Miami area’s ratio for under-40 households is 5, meaning it’s very unaffordable, according to Pew. The typical home in the tri-county area sells for $460,000, while the median income for a young household is just $92,591.

But South Florida is far from alone. Nationally, 61% of the 160 metro areas Pew studied were classified as somewhat or very unaffordable for young buyers in 2024 — up from just 41% in 2019. Home prices grew faster than young adults’ incomes in 142 of those metros over that five-year span.

That’s even more the case in Miami-Dade, where Miami Association of Realtors data shows single-family home prices more than doubled between 2020 and 2021 as wealthy out-of-staters flooded into Florida, causing home prices to skyrocket.

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Incomes haven’t kept pace. Between 2019 and 2024, the median household income in greater Miami rose only 34%, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.

At the same time, rising mortgage rates have compounded the squeeze. The average 30-year fixed rate climbed from 3.9% in 2019 to 6.7% in 2024, according to Freddie Mac data, as interest rates remain stubbornly high.

And down payments have become some of the biggest hurdles to buying. A found 70% of renters under 40 cited an inability to save for a down payment as the main reason they don’t own. Basically, they could pay a mortgage, but they can’t scrape together the money for a down payment.

This is all a major problem for young households, nearly 90% of whom told Pew it’s harder for them to buy a house than it was for their parents’ generation.

Homeownership has long been one of the most reliable paths to financial stability and wealth-building for American families, offering fixed housing costs, tax benefits and equity that appreciates over time.

Especially in high-cost-of-living areas like Miami, that’s driving people out. Census estimates show Miami-Dade lost roughly 10,000 residents last year. Florida’s working-age population — those between 18 and 64 — is expected to have shrunk between 2023 and 2025, reducing the size of the state’s workforce, according to recent projections from the Florida Chamber of Commerce, as affordability concerns push young workers to seek better opportunity elsewhere.

This story was produced with financial support from supporters including The Green Family Foundation Trust and Ken O’Keefe, in partnership with Journalism Funding Partners. The Miami Herald maintains full editorial control of this work.

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