The Typical Home Will Cost a Million Dollars as Millennials Hit Retirement
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The Typical Home Will Cost a Million Dollars as Millennials Hit Retirement, Economist Says
By Keith Griffith<br>June 17, 2026
Realtor.com/Getty Images
The median U.S. home price will likely hit $1 million around the year 2050, when the millennial generation is hitting the traditional age of retirement, a top housing economist has predicted.<br>"Essentially, in about 25 years the national median home price will be a million dollars," Lawrence Yun , chief economist at the National Association of Realtors®, said at a conference in Washington, DC, on Tuesday. "It may be hard to envision that, but back in 1990, the national median price was $90,000."<br>Yun noted that even San Francisco, considered an exorbitantly priced real estate market at the time, had a median price of only $250,000 in 1990.
Last month, the national median sales price for existing homes was nearly $430,000. Yun used multiple scenarios to project home prices out into the future, and says each scenario pointed to roughly the same timeline to hit $1 million: about 25 years.<br>"Homeowners will continue to build wealth, while renters are simply spinning their wheels," Yun said, addressing NAR members at the group's annual Legislative Meetings conference.
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Yun says he does not expect an economic recession to hit the U.S. in 2026, projecting job gains for the year at a solid 400,000.<br>His 2026 housing market forecast remained unchanged since he last revised it in April, when he made a sharp downward revision to projected home sales for the year in response to surging interest rates.<br>The economist now expects mortgage rates to average 6.5% across 2026, roughly where they sit now. He sees home prices rising 4% this year, up slightly from the 3% gain recorded in 2025.<br>Yun now projects existing-home sales transaction volume will grow 4% from the 30-year low reached in 2025, as higher interest rates kept the market frozen.<br>Although mortgage rates have surged off the three-year lows they touched in late February, rates remain modestly lower than they were a year ago, breathing some life into the housing...