With homeownership costs on the rise, not all young people are living with mom and dad. Some are cosigning a mortgage with them.
The share of young house hunters applying for a loan with a significantly older co-applicant has picked up in recent years, according to a recent analysis of lender data by the mortgage company Rocket.
Roughly one in 30, or 3.3%, of buyers below age 35 co-applied with someone over 55 in 2025, the Rocket analysis found. That's up 0.8 percentage points from 2.5% in 2019, the data show.
Some spots saw significantly larger gains in the same period: in sunny Fort Lauderdale, for instance, the share increased to 6.9% in 2025 from 4.5% in 2019. Out in arid Las Vegas, meanwhile, 5.6% of young buyers co-applied with older ones in 2025, up from 3.7%.
"The story here really is just one about affordability," says Chen Zhao, Rocket and Redfin's head of economics.
Rising mortgage rates have made it more expensive to buy a home across the board, with recent rates above 7% roughly double the 3% and 4% mortgages that were typical in the decade preceding the pandemic.
For would-be first-time buyers, that gain is compounded by the significant jump in home prices in the years immediately following the pandemic. Since the end of 2019, home prices measured by the S&P Cotality Case-Shiller Home Price Index are up more than 50%.
A higher barrier to entry means first-time buyers need to get creative.
"Increasingly, the ones who are able to buy are tapping into help from family," Zhao says. "One way to tap into that help is to have a parent or someone else in your family, someone who's older, basically be on a mortgage with you."
The spots with the greatest overall share of younger applicants co-applying with older ones likely come as no surprise: the expensive and wealthy southern California locales of Anaheim and Los Angeles top Rocket's analysis of 50 large metros, with 7.9% and 7% of young buyers co-applying with older ones, respectively.
But many of the places that saw the greatest ramp-up in share were in areas where home prices had risen particularly sharply during the pandemic.
Take Fort Lauderdale, for instance: the median home in 2025 sold for $485,000, up 64% since 2019, according to Rocket.
In New Brunswick, New Jersey, where the share of young buyers co-applying with older ones rose 1.8 percentage points to 5.5% in 2025 from 2019, prices grew 77% in the same time frame. In Las Vegas, where the median home sale price climbed to $425,000 as of 2025 from $285,000 in 2019, the share grew 2 percentage points to 5.6%.
The data illustrate the contribution to high housing costs that home prices play in a market in which mortgage rates have taken center stage, says Zhao.
"When rates went up, home prices didn't really go down in a lot of places," she says.
The bank of mom and dad isn't the only way first-time buyers can gain a foothold in a pricey housing market; the first-time buyers still shopping are finding other workarounds.
One in 12 first-time buyers in October turned to adjustable-rate mortgages, according to Intercontinental Exchange -- the highest share since the company began tracking the data in 2019.
More than one in three first-time buyers in October sought out loans backed by the Federal Housing Administration, which come with lower down payment requirements than conforming loans. That's the highest share since August, according to Intercontinental Exchange.
Zhao expects that home prices will keep on rising between 1% and 2% annually -- for now, at least.
"As you look a little bit further into the distance, it feels like if rates stay at this elevated level, that home prices need to start to give," she says. "That means that you could see a reversal of these trends that we have in this report -- but it will take some time before that happens."
Comments