Millennials chasing homeownership in California are increasingly skipping the Bay Area altogether, and the numbers show why. Stockton posted a 117% jump in millennial-owned households between 2018 and 2023, while San Jose and San Francisco remain stuck with roughly two-thirds of their millennial residents still renting, according to new metro-level data.
The trend was detailed in a Sacramento Bee analysis by reporter Gagandeep Singh, which drew on RentCafe data covering more than 100 U.S. metropolitan areas with the largest millennial household populations. RentCafe, which sourced its figures from the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series, focused specifically on metros with at least 50,000 millennial households in 2023 and found that four California cities ranked among the U.S. metro areas with the biggest gains in millennial homeowners.
Stockton led the pack among California metros, climbing from 17,333 millennial-owned households in 2018 to 37,711 in 2023 — a gain that landed it fourth nationally among all U.S. metro areas for growth in millennial homeownership, per the same report. Oxnard wasn't far behind, growing from 13,840 millennial-owned households in 2018 to 29,607 in 2023, a 113% increase that ranked fifth nationally. Fresno posted a 104% increase over the same period, placing 12th nationally, while San Diego's homeownership figures climbed 88%.
Why Smaller Metros Are Pulling Ahead
RentCafe's national top five for millennial homeowner growth was topped by North Port, Lakeland, Jacksonville, Stockton and Oxnard — a mix dominated by Florida and California's smaller and mid-sized metros. Nationally, millennial-owned households increased 74% between 2018 and 2023, with roughly 5.3 million millennials becoming homeowners during that stretch, out of 12.4 million total millennial households in the U.S.
Alexandra Both, a senior real estate writer and research analyst with RentCafe, said more affordable home prices, manageable inflation, strong income growth and higher quality of life attract millennials to these markets, the Sacramento Bee reported. The article also notes that smaller metro areas benefited from COVID-19 pandemic-driven migration patterns, as millennials moved away from major cities in search of remote work opportunities and more physical space. Veronica Grecu, another RentCafe researcher cited in the piece, said homeownership is rising among older members of Generation Y — millennials are defined in the analysis as people born between 1981 and 1996.
Beyond the four cities highlighted in the Sacramento Bee's reporting, additional California metros saw sizable millennial homeownership expansion over the same 2018-to-2023 window. According to an Edhat analysis, Bakersfield surged 88%, San Diego rose 88.9%, Sacramento climbed 79.5% and Riverside increased 72.8%.
Bay Area Renters Left Behind
The contrast with California's coastal tech hubs is stark. San Jose had 65% of millennials renting, with millennial renter households increasing from 118,794 in 2018 to 139,072 in 2023 — a 17% jump even as ownership lagged. San Francisco wasn't far behind, with 62.4% of millennials still renting despite a 10.6% increase in renter households from 2018, Edhat reported.
Los Angeles had the highest concentration of millennial renters among all U.S. metro areas, with about 70% of millennials renting rather than owning property, per the Sacramento Bee's findings. Renter households in Los Angeles grew from 771,288 in 2018 to 906,663 in 2023. San Diego, despite its strong homeownership gains, still had 64% of millennials renting. Riverside saw its millennial renter households increase nearly 14% between 2018 and 2023, reaching 195,734 total renter households, while Oxnard's renter households grew 15% to 37,737 in 2023.
Nationally, millennial renters accounted for nearly 12.6 million U.S. households, an increase of roughly 600,000 households and about 5% growth from 2018 to 2023. Still, the Sacramento Bee's report notes that millennial homeowners outnumber renters in about three out of four metro areas favored by Generation Y — meaning California's coastal cities are something of an outlier within the broader national picture. Younger millennials in particular have delayed buying homes because of student debt and high costs, according to the report.
The Affordability Math Behind the Migration
The pressure pushing millennials toward inland cities is rooted in brutal statewide affordability numbers. Only 18% of California households could afford to purchase a median-priced single-family home of $869,300 in the fourth quarter of 2025, which required a minimum annual household income of $213,200 to cover mortgage payments, according to the California Association of Realtors. That affordability index of 18% sits at less than one-third of its historical peak of 56%, recorded back in the fourth quarter of 2012.
Statewide home prices remain near record territory even after a recent dip. The median price for an existing single-family home in California stood at $887,680 in July, down 1.9% from June after touching a record high of $930,260 in May, the California Association of Realtors reported. A previous Hoodline report found that Californians don't reach majority homeownership until age 47 — 11 years later than the national average of 36 — with the threshold stretching to 59 in Los Angeles County, based on a Public Policy Institute of California analysis of Census Bureau data.
The delay isn't unique to California. Nationwide, the share of first-time homebuyers fell to an all-time low of 21% between July 2024 and June 2025, while the median age of first-time buyers climbed to a record 40 years old, according to the National Association of Realtors. To close the gap, many millennials are leaning on family support or their own investment accounts: nearly 20% of recent millennial homebuyers relied on down payment gifts or loans from family, while 20% sold stock investments and 13% accessed retirement funds early, according to a Redfin analysis reported by National Mortgage Professional.
State officials have also stepped in. The California Housing Finance Agency opened applications in February for its $150 million to $200 million Dream For All Shared Appreciation Loan program, which offers eligible first-generation homebuyers up to 20% in down payment assistance through a randomized selection lottery, according to the agency. Meanwhile, the gap between renting and owning keeps widening in many counties: the California Legislative Analyst's Office found that the monthly payment premium to own a home compared to renting grew across 35 of 48 studied California counties between 2020 and 2026, reaching 3.2 times monthly rent in Santa Clara County.
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