Finding a way in: Young homebuyers navigate Long Island's brutal housing market

At 27, Anthony Santorelli did what many his age haven’t: He bought a house.

He and his wife, Gianna Santorelli, moved into their Amityville home in May after years of saving and an arduous search through listings in a high-demand, low-inventory market. 

But buying the home was no easy task. 

Anthony Santorelli, a sales representative at Cintas, a facilities services supply company in Central Islip, said they faced sky-high housing prices and property taxes — costs much higher than he expected.

After putting in the offer, the weight of the decision hit him.

“I would be lying … if I [said] I didn’t lose sleep with every emotion you could have,” he said. “You think about anything and everything. ‘Can we afford it? Can we make the payments?’”

Anthony Santorelli, now 28, said he eventually bought the house for $800,000 — with a 20% down payment. But the Santorellis' situation is increasingly rare.

The average age of first-time homebuyers nationally hit a record high of 40, up from 31 just a decade ago, according to a study among more than 6,100 recent homebuyers from the National Association of Realtors, conducted between June 2024 and July 2025.

On Long Island, soaring home values have locked young people out of homeownership, a trend that experts say threatens to destabilize the region's economy and hollow out its workforce.

“The young homebuyer … is really essential because they are the farm system for the residential homeowner,” said Martin Cantor, director of the Long Island Center for Socio-Economic Policy.

The median single-family home price in Nassau County rose 6.1% to $837,000 in October compared with a year prior, while the median price rose 4.6% in Suffolk County, to $701,000, according to OneKey MLS, the multiple listing service that covers Long Island. These values are much higher than the national median home sale price, which was $410,800 in the latest Federal Reserve data released in July.

Though home prices have leveled off recently, they remain staggeringly high for the average young prospective homebuyer, according to October 2025 data.

A March Redfin report found that just 26% of Gen Z own homes, numbers that lag far behind previous generations. The study also reported that just 33% of 27-year-olds, or the oldest Gen Zers, own their home, compared with 40% of baby boomers at the same age.

Cantor warns that without attainable housing and viable jobs, young adults will flee the region.

“They’ll locate someplace else where the housing prices are cheaper and where the jobs are plentiful,” Cantor said.

Soaring home prices aren’t the only issue.

High interest rates on mortgage loans and property taxes, as well as student debt and a shortage of homes available for sale in the Long Island market, have boxed many young people out of homeownership.

“Very quickly [the region] was priced out for many first-time homebuyers,” said Shaughnessy Dusling, a licensed associate broker from Hauppauge who has worked with first-time buyers for 12 years. She notes the average age of buyers she works with has risen in recent years.

Dusling and other brokers say young homebuyers, who often have less cash on hand, are at a disadvantage. Older homebuyers are more likely to put down high cash sums, sparking bidding wars.

Sari Eidelkind, an associate real estate broker at Lucky to Live Here Realty, has seen some of her clients overcome by “buyer’s fatigue” due to bidding wars. She says some are “looking for so long, putting offers out there for many houses [and] not getting it because there's just so much cash out there.”

Housing costs push young workers elsewhere

Substantial migration out of the region could destabilize key industries. A 2019 Long Island Association report warned that a shrinking young population imperils schools and hospitals, where 20-to-39-year-olds traditionally make up a disproportionate share of teachers and nurses.

Paul Connor, the chief administrative officer at Stony Brook Eastern Long Island Hospital in Greenport, said workforce housing is a critical issue.

Connor says that about 25 years ago, most staff were from the North Fork. Today, just half of the staff are from the area.

The hospital has about a 10% nurse vacancy rate and has even struggled to recruit physicians, who command average starting salaries between $300,000 and $350,000.

“If they're coming right out of school, they have debt,” Connor said. “While they can afford a mortgage, because of that debt, down payments … become problematic.”

Medical school debt averaged nearly $250,000 in 2025 among newly indebted graduates, according to data from the Educational Data Initiative.

The hospital has attempted to alleviate the affordability crisis by building apartments for some licensed professionals.

“We want doctors to become part of our community,” he said. “Once they become part of our community, we know we will retain those individuals.”

Many aspiring homebuyers rent before they buy as a stopgap measure while they strengthen their finances or save for a down payment. But even renting on Long Island is too costly for many young people.

Monthly rent in November climbed to $4,000 in Suffolk and $3,521 in Nassau, according to Zillow’s observed rental index. For comparison, the average national rent was $1,925.

Inside the first-time buyer maze

Some real estate professionals say young homebuyers have critical misconceptions about the market, One major error: believing that a 20% down payment is a necessity.

“Ninety percent of the buyers I work with put 3.5% down,” said Nicholas Larsen, a real estate salesperson at Nick and Nat Real Estate Team, who encourages clients to explore smaller down payments.

Federal Housing Administration loans allow homebuyers to make a down payment as low as 3.5% and are more lenient in credit score requirements. Conventional loans also allow down payments of as low as 3%.

But Larsen concedes that lower down payments can be a tough sell in competitive markets where sellers usually prioritize the security of a higher upfront payment.

A smaller down payment also usually means higher monthly payments and more interest paid.

Lisa Zambelli, a loan officer at Cliffco Mortgage in Uniondale, encourages young homebuyers to consult lenders before house hunting to understand the nuances of home financing. For example, she said some are often blindsided by the impact of student loan debt, a liability that factors into one’s debt-to-income ratio and could affect a homebuyer’s ability to secure a loan.

“That is something they should really be thinking about at the high school level," Zambelli said. “‘Is the job that I'm going to secure really going to give me the amount of money I'm going to need to cover all this debt?’”

Some young buyers have been able to seal the deal with help from friends and family via gift funds.

According to a 2025 Redfin report, nearly one quarter, or 23.8% of surveyed first-time homebuyers nationally received down-payment help from family, either through a cash gift or inheritance.

An exception, not the rule

Others are turning to government programs or nonprofit agencies for help — or finding non-traditional paths to ownership.

At 24, Noah King was almost certain he’d have to leave Long Island to afford a home.

In October 2023, shortly after starting a $62,000-a-year job as a care manager in Hauppauge supporting young adults with special needs, King began looking to settle down with his then-fiancée, now his wife.

A Long Island native from Baldwin, he quickly expanded his search to cities as far away as Syracuse.

“My goal was just to get an initial starter place to live, so that way I could start building equity on it,” King said.

But he soon found a way to stay closer to home: the Brookhaven Down Payment Assistance program, which offers grants of up to $50,000 to help first-time buyers with down payments.

In May, King and his wife purchased a $199,000 cooperative town house in Coram, a hamlet in the town, with support from the program. They also received help navigating the application process from the nonprofit Long Island Housing Partnership.

King said he couldn’t have afforded the purchase — with its $920 monthly co-op mortgage payment and $1,000 monthly homeowners association fee — without the down payment assistance. He also took on a second job as an Uber driver, which he said brought in an extra $11,000 last year and helped make the monthly costs manageable.

In a cooperative, residents own shares in the corporation that owns the property, rather than the home itself. Though King does not own the land on which the home sits, he can still build equity as the value of those shares rises. Under the terms of the affordability program, however, price increases are capped to keep the unit affordable for future buyers.

The Long Island Housing Partnership also operates a community land trust that acquires land and develops homes for affordable ownership, lowering upfront costs for buyers. The organization helps house about 10 to 15 homeowners each year — meaningful for those families, but modest in a region where thousands of young adults are priced out annually.

Programs like these are a life raft for some young adults, not a sea change reversing the demographic shifts already underway on Long Island.

But in King’s case, the assistance allowed him to do what thousands of his peers could not: stay.

“I felt very proud of what I had accomplished,” he said.