You’ve heard the gripe about millennials and their spending before.
If only they cut back on avocado toast and their beloved pumpkin spice lattes, millennials would be able to afford homes just like the boomers did before them.
But the truth, naturally, is not that simple. According to realtor.com, you’d need to skip 6,147 pumpkin spice lattes (or a latte a day for 17 years!) to have enough for a down payment on a typical home in the United States.
To arrive at these numbers, realtor.com researchers took the price of a median American home, which was $261,262 as of June. As the iconic Starbucks drink costs $4.25, a 10 percent down payment would require a homebuyer to skip 6,147 lattes — or a latte a day for the next 17 years. With most financial advisers recommending a 20 percent down payment, the number of lattes he or she would have to skip would be even higher.
Your latte-skipping is also not going to cut it if you live anywhere near a coast or a large metropolis. In California’s Santa Clara, the average home commands $1.1 million, meaning you’d need to skip a latte a day for 71 years to reach that $110,000 down payment. San Francisco, where a median-priced home soars to $920,000, would require skipping a lattes a day for 59 years.
Needless to say, rising home prices and high rates of student loans are what’s causing headaches for most people.