The Pandemic Windfall, Mapped: Where Affordability Opened the Door to New Wealth

From 2020 to 2024, U.S. home values surged, creating a major windfall for homeowners. Yet the metros that generated the biggest gains were not just the ones where prices climbed the highest—they were also the places where households could still afford to get in, according to a new report from Realtor.com®.

The finding underscores a critical point about homeownership’s role as one of the American middle class’ most powerful wealth-building tools: Appreciation is a driver, but access is the key to the engine.

To that point, the report also finds that earlier entry can have an outsized payoff. Buying a house by age 32 is associated with roughly 22.5% more net worth at age 50, or about $119,000 more, than waiting another decade to buy.

“While affordability challenges are delaying entry into homeownership, housing wealth has continued to grow rapidly in many parts of the country, particularly for households who were able to buy in the past six or seven years,” says Hannah Jones, Realtor.com senior economic research analyst and author of the report.

As the housing market remains top of mind for policymakers at every level, the lesson from the metros where housing wealth grew most across generations is clear: Yes, homeownership builds wealth, but affordability determines who can.

The affordability on-ramp to generational wealth

Interestingly, among the metros where younger households built the most housing wealth from 2019 to 2024, Gen Z and millennial buyers were not concentrated in the very cheapest places. In fact, their cohort had the highest median list price in 2019—just under $290,000, compared with $282,000 for Gen X and $270,000 for boomers.

The pattern suggests that younger buyers weren’t targeting bargain markets, but prioritizing metros where job opportunities were strong and homeownership was possible with a little help—in the form of family funds, higher incomes, or financing tools that lowered the upfront hurdle, says Jones.

When asked what could explain the higher entry points, she says: “It could be millennials and Gen Z already having more money from family or from higher incomes. It could be chasing these high-growth metros with a lot of job opportunities. And it could be these younger, first-time buyers utilizing loan programs, like VA loans, or other down payment assistance programs in order to get into homeownership.”

Of the 10 metros where Gen Z and millennial homeowners built the most housing wealth, five rank among the top 25 U.S. metros for Veterans Affairs loans issued per capita.

The power of those loans is something Belen Garcia, a real estate agent in San Diego, has seen firsthand.

Garcia recently helped two buyers, aged 20 and 23, close on a house in one of the country’s most expensive housing markets thanks to a VA loan.

“With the VA loan, the benefit is that they can buy a home with 0% down payment, so they don’t have to wait until they have the savings for a down payment, which is a big plus,” Garcia says.

That’s a huge edge in today’s market. It takes a typical first-time buyer nearly 10 years to save for a down payment today, while 35 years ago, it took just three, research from Realtor.com shows.

VA loans can compress that timeline, allowing buyers to start building equity earlier—exactly when the long-term wealth benefits of homeownership are strongest.

Florida’s multigenerational door to wealth

While VA loans can create affordability where it might not otherwise exist, the Sunshine State is proof of how broad price accessibility drives wealth for all. 

Ten Florida metros accounted for 13 of the top 30 places that built the most housing wealth across generations. Jacksonville, North Port, and Ocala each landed on two generations’ top 10 lists.

Jacksonville is perhaps the most striking example. Gen Z and millennial homeowners there gained nearly $50 billion in housing wealth between 2019 and 2024, while boomers and older gained nearly $54 billion.

Part of what made Florida so unusual is that before the COVID-19 pandemic, many of these markets still offered a genuine path in.

“You could still buy a very nice home for, you know, $300,000, so it was very approachable,” says David Crawford, broker-owner of Catalyst Realty in Sarasota and the 2026 president of the Realtor Association of Sarasota and Manatee. 

“Everybody kind of had a shot,” he adds. “There were products for all income levels back then.”

With inventory for every buyer, the door was effectively wide open to wealth-building for younger households who could find starter homes before prices soared, while also handing longtime owners a major equity windfall.

Then the pandemic turbocharged the scale of demand.

“We saw home values absolutely skyrocket" across the state, says Jones. Even though prices have softened in some places since the pandemic peak, they remain “far above those 2019 home price levels.”

In places like Sarasota, that demand also transformed markets that had once flown under the radar. 

“We were kind of a hidden gem before. The secret’s out now,” Crawford says.

Even for older generations, the biggest wealth windfalls didn’t happen where you might expect

Even the market’s most entrenched homeowners—baby boomers and Gen Xers—didn’t build the most housing wealth in the country’s most elite or expensive markets.

Instead, many of their biggest windfalls showed up in metros where strong local economies, scarce inventory, and surging pandemic-era demand combined to send home values soaring.

For boomers and older homeowners, 6 of the top 10 metros were in Florida, with other standout markets in the Southeast. Spartanburg, SC, ranked first, where housing wealth grew 135.4%, or $8.8 billion, while Gainesville, FL, ranked second, with gains of 133.2%, or $10.9 billion. 

Gen X followed a similar pattern, with a somewhat broader map. North Port, FL, ranked first, with housing wealth growth of 264.6%, or $31.5 billion. Madison, WI, came in second, at 230.7%, or $23.1 billion, followed by Port St. Lucie, FL, at 219.7%.

In Madison, real estate agent Dan Bertelson says the housing market had historically low inventory before the pandemic. But it also had an unusually strong employment base tied to the University of Wisconsin system, hospitals, biotech, and major employers. 

“The perfect storm of why Madison area hit for Gen X was certainly the timing of their jobs,” he says.

That meant Gen X buyers were able to enter the frenzy with stronger balance sheets. In Madison, Berleston says, many were able to compete with 20% down payments and more aggressive financing structures at a moment when bidding wars were intensifying and buyers were starting to waive protections.

In Provo, UT, Kristy Dimmick, president of the Utah Central Association of Realtors, saw a similar dynamic. 

The market entered 2020 with a median home price of about $330,000. Then it took off as mortgage rates fell and buyer demand surged. 

“We had a lot of people wanting to enter the market because of interest rates and because of the desire to be in a home,” she says. 

Many of the buyers who could still win were move-up households bringing equity from an earlier purchase—buyers, Dimmick says, who were “selling their homes and getting a really great amount of equity,” then using it to strengthen their next offer.

The boom changed more than home values

The lessons from these metros draw new attention to the supply gap in the housing market, currently estimated at over 4 million homes, according to the latest estimate from Realtor.com.

And in 2025, that shortage has driven nearly 2 million Gen Z and millennial would-be homebuyers to sit out the market, missing out on the potential to max their net worth by age 50 through the compound gains of homeownership.

If policymakers are serious about fixing this problem—as many suggest they are—they need look no further than places like San Diego, where young buyers are breaking through some of the highest list prices in the country with zero down payment mortgage options. Or Florida, where ample inventory in 2019 opened the door to wealth across generations.