1 in 3 Young Americans Now Live With Their Parents. Here's Why.

The empty nest is filling back up. In 2025 a record 25.2 million adults under 35 lived with a parent, roughly one in three people in that age group, according to a Realtor.com report released in June 2026. That count has now passed the pandemic-era high, when campuses closed and millions of young adults moved home to wait it out.

The easy version of this story is that Gen Z would rather raid the family fridge than grow up. The data tells a different story.

It is not a motivation problem. It is a math problem.

About 70% of 25 to 34 year olds still living at home are employed. These are working adults with paychecks, and a growing share hold four-year degrees. As Realtor.com senior economist Hannah Jones summed it up, this is a supply story, not an employment story.

The supply problem is enormous. The US is short roughly 4 million homes, a gap that has widened since construction stalled after the 2008 financial crisis. Entry-level homes, the kind a first-time buyer could actually afford, are the scarcest of all.

Price tells the rest. The national median home list price hit $430,000 in 2025, up 34.4% from 2019. Median asking rent climbed to $1,673, up 17.9% over the same stretch. Paychecks have not kept pace, so for millions the move out is not a "not yet." It is a "not possible."

The trapped cohort

The pain is not spread evenly. Among adults 30 to 34, the share living with parents reached 12.7% in 2025, roughly double the 7.1% recorded in 2000. Many in this group were in their late 20s during the pandemic and never fully launched. The cohort just behind them hit prime renting age right as mortgage rates and prices spiked in 2022 and 2023, so they show no improvement at all.

NAR deputy chief economist Jessica Lautz notes that buyers who enter the market later lose years of potential home equity, a gap that compounds for the rest of their financial lives.

Where it is worst

Geography maps almost perfectly onto cost. The highest co-residence rates sit in expensive coastal states: New Jersey leads at about 44%, followed by Connecticut at 41%, California at 39%, and Maryland at 38%. At the other end, fast-growing, build-friendly North Dakota records the lowest share in the country at about 12%.

The pattern is consistent. Where housing is expensive and supply is tight, young adults stay home. Where it is easier and cheaper to build, they move out sooner.

The cost lands on parents too

This is not a one-way arrangement. A 2026 Wells Fargo survey found that 64% of parents with Gen Z children said their adult kids still rely on them for money, housing, or other support, and 56% said that help is straining their own finances. Many parents are also delaying plans to downsize, holding onto larger homes along with the higher mortgage, taxes, and utility bills that come with them.

One thing is shifting as a result. Agents report a rising number of families asking a question that used to be rare: can a single home comfortably support three generations instead of two?

What 25 million delayed households mean

Strip away the headlines and this is a number about demand that has not arrived yet. Every adult still in a childhood bedroom is a household that has not formed, a lease unsigned, a first home unpurchased. Realtor.com frames the 25 million figure as exactly that: a generation of demand the market has not absorbed.

That demand does not disappear. It waits. As more homes get built and affordability slowly improves, some of these households will finally form, and the data already shows where they tend to land. The states where young adults move out earliest are the ones where building is easier and a paycheck stretches further. Affordability, not preference, is steering where this generation ends up.

For now the trend line points in one direction. Until the country closes a 4 million home gap, the childhood bedroom is going to stay occupied a lot longer than it used to be.