Forget doomscrolling about the news or arguing about politics at the dinner table, for young Americans, the thing keeping them up at night isn’t democracy or even grocery prices anymore. It’s housing.

A new CNBC survey of registered voters found that among 18-to-34-year-olds (and men up to age 49), the cost of housing has climbed to the top of the list of national concerns, beating out food prices, immigration, and worries about democracy itself. Across all age groups, housing still ranks fourth overall, but for the youngest voters, it’s officially problem number one.

So why does buying a house suddenly feel impossible?

Home prices have exploded since 2020, up more than 50% nationwide, according to Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies. The typical U.S. home now sells for roughly $400,000, compared to around $315,000 back in 2019. Even “starter homes” the smaller, cheaper places first-time buyers usually start with have gone up by about a third since 2019, and there are way fewer of them available. The share of listings priced under $350,000 has nearly cut in half over the past seven years.

And it’s not just the sticker price. Mortgage rates are sitting above 6.5%. Property taxes have jumped over 30% since 2019. Home insurance, thanks in large part to more frequent extreme weather has spiked nearly 50% since 2021, rising almost three times faster than everyday inflation. So even people who technically could afford a mortgage payment are getting squeezed from every direction once taxes, insurance, and interest rates are added in.

One eye-opening stat: economists estimate the typical household would now need to spend about two-thirds of its income just to afford a median-priced home. That’s not “tight budget” territory, that’s a serious burden to deal with.

The generational gap is real

Here’s the part that stings for younger buyers: people who already own homes are sitting on a pile of new equity thanks to rising values. But if you don’t already own which describes most people under 35, none of that upside helps you. You’re just watching the price of entry go up every year.

Meanwhile, first-time buyers made up just 21% of all home purchases last year, and their average age hit a record high of 40. Forty. Not exactly the picture of a fresh-out-of-college homeowner. Baby boomers, on the other hand, are dominating the market on both ends, the majority of sellers and a huge chunk of buyers.

This isn’t just an economic statistic, it’s shaping where young people choose to live, whether they move out on their own at all, and increasingly, how they vote. When an entire generation feels locked out of a milestone their parents and grandparents took for granted, it stops being a personal budgeting problem and starts becoming a political one.

Until next time…

Lila K