The top 10 most millennial-friendly places to buy a home, where prices are lower than average

Home prices continue to climb, but some markets still might offer a good deal.
For younger homebuyers, some areas of the Southeast and Midwest might be more affordable.
These are the 10 most millennial-friendly housing markets.

Adulting could get a little easier, at least in these 10 cities.

As millennials move through their 30s and 40s and prepare to buy a house, they're faced with an increasingly expensive real estate market: the average home in the US sold for over half a million in the second quarter of 2025, at $512,800. The national median price of $435,300 in June was the highest on record.

But some areas of the country are more friendly to first-time, younger homebuyers than others, according to a recent study from SmartAsset.

Many of these areas are mid-sized metros in the Southeast and Midwest. The Midwest in particular has seen a boom in real estate activity in recent months, but remains one of the most affordable homebuying regions in the country, according to a Redfin report from earlier this year.

On the other hand, some of the most difficult places for millennials to buy homes feature the usual suspects — expensive housing markets on the coasts, such as San Francisco and New York City. Fewer than 1% of local millennials purchased a home in those areas in 2024. For those who purchased a house in the San Francisco area, the median millennial property value was a whopping $1,505,000.

Below are the top 10 metro areas where the local millennial population purchased the most homes in 2024, along with the median millennial property value and median income of millennial mortgagor.

For context, the median price of a home sold in the US was $410,800 and the average price is $513,800 in the second quarter of 2025, according to the US Department of Housing and Urban Development. Seven out of the 10 median millennial property values on this list are below the national median. All figures are based on metropolitan statistical areas, which may include surrounding suburbs and cross state lines.

Raleigh, NC