Why the Most Popular Cities Are Out of Reach for Young Professionals

Here’s one sign that your rent is too high and you can’t afford to buy a home: You live in a city that isn’t building enough new houses and apartments to keep up with the pace of a growing population.

That sounds elementary, but new research from Zillow illustrating the trend is still worth examining. Housing experts have been worrying for years over millennial homebuyers, who have put off buying homes for longer than members of previous generations. Lately there have been indications that young workers are getting ready to enter the market—in some cases because they're sick of paying high rents. But the Zillow research, which compares the number of new residents in some of the biggest U.S. cities to the number of building permits issued, indicates that home prices may remain out of reach for first-time buyers in some of the cities young people are most likely to want to live in.