One of the biggest problems young people are having is how to afford to buy a home. The real estate market has priced Gen Zers out of the market. They are doomed to be renters for the rest of their lives. Or so the very rich who own most of the housing stock would have it. Corporations are even buying up single family homes. Recently there has been an executive order by DJT to prevent Wall Street investors from buying up single family homes. Following Executive Order 14376, which declared an administration policy that large institutional investors should not acquire single-family homes that could otherwise be purchased by families, Congress has passed the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, which would impose a broad acquisition ban on covered “large institutional investors.” The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act (H.R. 6644 / S. 2651) became federal law on July 11, 2026 as Public Law 119–101. This is a step in the right direction.
However, it does nothing in terms of affordability for first time home buyers. California voters approved Proposition 37 on Tuesday, creating a loan program to help qualified buyers cover part of their down payment on newly built homes. Voters also approved Proposition 1, which authorizes California to issue $11.25 billion in bonds to support housing affordability programs, including multifamily rental housing, permanent supportive housing, and affordable housing. The funding also backs both down payment assistance programs and mortgage programs for veterans. Down payment assistance is something the Federal Government should get involved in, and with a new Democratic Congress this may be a realty.
According to realtor.com, “The median listing price for newly built single-family homes in the San Jose metro is over $2.1 million. In Los Angeles, it’s over $1.7 million. San Francisco has a median of about $1.5 million, and San Diego’s median is about $1.3 million. Among newly built single-family homes for sale in 2026 in the San Jose metro, just 41.7% were priced below $1.5 million. In Los Angeles, the share was 41.7% as well; 49.5% of newly built single-family homes in San Francisco were below the threshold; and in San Diego, 61.4% were. Proposition 37 has the potential to help prospective California home buyers, but only if they can find new homes to buy.”
Problem is that Prop 37 would only help with down payment assistance. The monthly payments might still be too much for young people to afford. What is needed is to put enough money down so that the monthly payments are affordable.
Here’s how I solved the problem for my daughter. I owned three properties which had appreciated in value quite a bit over the years. So I had a lot of equity just sitting there. The goal was to transfer or shift that equity to a new property for my daughter to live in at a monthly payment she could afford and such that my economic situation would not be changed at all. I would have no new monthly payments; I would still collect rent on my two rental properties. My income and expenditures would remain the same. The first step was to get a reverse mortgage on the property I lived in. That netted X amount of dollars. Then I contacted a home equity investment company. This is different from a home equity loan which requires monthly payments to pay back the loan. A home equity investment company loans you money based on the equity in your home or other properties, and then takes a percentage of the increase in equity of those properties when they are sold. In effect it is a reverse mortgage without the requirement that you are over a certain age and that you live in the property. They also are for a certain time span at which the property must be sold or the deal consummated. I chose a 30 year contract which would make me 115 at the conclusion of the contract. In effect my daughter will have inherited both rental properties and my home on my death and will consummate the contracts. So we got Y dollars on the one rental property and Z dollars on the other so that we had X + Y + Z dollars with which to buy a home for my daughter. In effect she got part of her inheritance in advance so that she could be a home owner herself. Her home’s equity will also increase as time passes, but neither the reverse mortgage company nor the home equity investment company has a claim on the equity in her home, just on my 3 properties. My daughter could inherit the home equity investment contract and keep it for the 30 year term if she wanted to, but she would probably settle all three contracts at the time of my death.
So my daughter bought a condo for $500K and we made a down payment of $400K so she has a mortgage of $100K approximately for which she can afford the monthly payments which are less than she could rent an apartment for. This could be done by other people who are sitting on trillions in home equity across the nation. A government program could facilitate this. A government program could also replace the home equity investment companies and take an equity stake in a first time home buyer’s home thus getting a young person into a home with monthly payments they could afford. This would truly make homes affordable again and the government could actually make money instead of going further into debt.
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