Do You Need Rich Parents to Buy a Home? — with Kyla Scanlon and Aziz Sunderji

Scott Galloway opens by pointing out the central political conflict: housing prices are at record highs, which benefits existing owners but harms prospective buyers. The median first-time buyer is now 40, and first-time buyers make up only 21% of purchases, meaning roughly four out of five buyers already own a home. Kyla Scanlon argues that policy should not simply favor owners or renters but should make the two positions more equal. Homeowners can deduct certain costs and build equity, while renters often feel they are “throwing money away,” so she suggests giving renters more tax relief or creating ways for them to build equity earlier. Aziz Sunderji says the political problem is especially difficult because about two-thirds of households own homes and view them as their main source of wealth. Politicians therefore hesitate to support falling prices; even Donald Trump has said he wants higher, not lower, home prices. Sunderji’s preferred direction is a gradual transition away from relying on homes as the primary retirement asset, while helping people get onto the property ladder and supporting renters in the meantime. Scott is much less neutral. He argues that permitting was effectively handed from bureaucrats to existing homeowners, who have an incentive to keep supply limited. He calls the result a transfer of wealth and opportunity from younger people to older owners, saying that leadership should focus on “build, baby build”—potentially millions of homes—rather than primarily subsidizing demand.

Scanlon says the housing crisis affects more than the ability to purchase a house. For younger adults, it can undermine the feeling that they have a stable place in the economy. She is 29 and does not know when she will be able to buy, and she observes that many people now rely on parents or other outside help for a down payment. If people cannot see a path to housing, she says, they may question whether it makes sense to work hard, marry, or build a long-term economic future. Scanlon also connects the problem to the post-World War II period, when older generations benefited from policies that helped them accumulate wealth. She notes that one in five Americans is expected to be over 65 by 2030, compared with one in 20 in the 1920s. That could eventually create a structural oversupply when older owners pass homes on, potentially hurting younger owners who bought at high prices. Sunderji adds that inherited wealth will not necessarily help young adults soon: if parents live into old age, their children may not inherit until they are 60 or older. Sunderji’s data suggests the problem starts before ownership. At age 30, roughly one-third of millennials live with their parents, compared with 19% of baby boomers at the same age. A large share of the ownership gap between the generations comes from people never moving into their own household. Among those who do move out and marry, millennial homeownership is much closer to the boomer rate. By age 40, the 18-percentage-point ownership gap at age 30 narrows to about eight points, suggesting that people are delayed rather than permanently excluded.

Sunderji examines whether housing reflects a broader K-shaped economy. A household earning $50,000 can keep housing below 30% of income in Detroit, while San Francisco requires more than $100,000 to reach a comparable burden. He says his analysis adjusted the definition of “luxury” for local price appreciation rather than simply placing homes into today’s nominal price categories. The result was more nuanced than the idea that every market is shifting toward luxury: Miami, San Francisco, and, to a lesser extent, New York have seen luxury homes take a larger share of transactions, while cities such as Pittsburgh, Atlanta, and Cleveland have seen more activity at the lower end. Most cities were relatively stable. Scanlon says expensive cities nevertheless matter because they attract jobs, high-earning employers, and opportunities. She moved from Kentucky to Los Angeles for a finance job, but recalls paying $2,000 a month in 2019 for a 300-square-foot studio. She says high rents prevent young people from taking risks, moving for opportunity, or getting close to major companies and networks. Both guests argue that the issue is not simply that people want glamorous cities. Sunderji says cities are productive places where people meet, build businesses, and access economic activity, so the demand is partly rational. He also cites a study suggesting that even turning every Manhattan building into a skyscraper would reduce rents by only about 15%, because demand to live there is so strong.

Scott compares the United States’ housing construction with population growth. In 1973, the country completed about 2.1 million privately owned homes with a population of roughly 211 million. In 2024, it completed about 1.6 million homes with a population above 340 million, cutting the homes-built-to-population ratio approximately in half. He also notes that duplexes, triplexes, and fourplexes represented 7% of new homes in 1979 but only about 1.1% in 2025. He worries that programs such as buyer tax credits can push prices higher when supply does not increase. Scanlon agrees that demand-side support is politically easier than changing zoning. Policies affecting mortgage financing or helping individual buyers can be passed more readily than reforms to local land-use rules, but when more purchasing power meets too few homes, prices rise. Sunderji agrees that supply should be the focus, and says “NIMBY” opposition has blocked construction to protect property values and neighborhood character. He supports moving some decisions to higher levels of government so local homeowners cannot veto projects that would benefit a broader population. Sunderji cautions that zoning is not the entire explanation. Dense cities have little vacant land, so new buildings may require expensive demolition and taller construction. A 12-story building can cost about 40% more per square foot than a three-story building. Infrastructure, sewage capacity, traffic, environmental review, landmark rules, and other regulations can also constrain building. Some concerns are legitimate, he says, but opponents often weaponize them to prevent any neighborhood change.

The conversation turns to unconventional ways to increase supply. Scott mentions manufactured homes, which can be built and assembled more cheaply than homes constructed entirely on site, and new communities in unincorporated areas that try to avoid restrictive local rules. Scanlon proposes helping older homeowners downsize. Boomers own about 30% of three- to four-bedroom homes, compared with about 15% for millennials with children, according to a Redfin statistic she cites. Many older owners say they would like to move but cannot afford the transaction costs, higher interest rates, or the emotional cost of leaving a family home. Policies that help them refinance into smaller homes could free larger houses for families. Sunderji focuses on the economics faced by builders. The apartment boom in Austin and other Sun Belt cities was enabled by low interest rates, high rents, and zoning that permitted construction. Now that rents have fallen—by about 21% in real terms in places such as Austin—builders are pulling back because new projects no longer promise sufficient returns. He argues that affordability will require lowering the return builders need, not just legalizing construction. One possible tool is for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which already buy and securitize residential mortgages, to become more active in loans for apartment construction. Government-backed financing could be cheaper than private financing, allowing builders to construct at lower rent-growth assumptions. Sunderji acknowledges this is a subsidy but considers it relatively efficient because it directly encourages additional supply.

The guests discuss New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s rent freeze, which took effect for roughly one million rent-stabilized apartments while landlords continued a legal challenge. Scanlon says a freeze responds to the pain of high rents but complicates the supply-and-demand system. Landlords still need a return on their properties, and suppressing rents can worsen the underlying shortage by discouraging maintenance and new construction. Sunderji says economists generally view rent control and rent freezes negatively for several reasons. The benefits are distributed somewhat arbitrarily to people who happen to occupy controlled apartments, the policy can be unfair to otherwise similar renters, and it reduces incentives to add supply. Scott illustrates the problem with a personal story: when he was younger and working in finance, he and a friend applied for a rent-controlled apartment in Santa Monica. About 25 people were waiting to apply, and Scott realized that he and his friend—well-paid young professionals—might have had a better chance than people who actually needed assistance. Sunderji contrasts rent control with Section 8 vouchers. Under the program, households with sufficiently low incomes pay about 30% of their income toward housing and the federal government covers the rest. Eligibility is based on need rather than the random fact of occupying a particular controlled unit. The major limitation is funding: only roughly one in four or one in five eligible people receives a voucher. The guests therefore present better funding for targeted rental assistance as preferable to broad price controls.

Scott asks whether housing unaffordability is causing people to delay relationships and families, or whether declining relationship formation is independently causing people to postpone buying homes. The data he cites shows that 80% of married adults owned homes in 2021, compared with 48% of never-married adults. Among first-time buyers, 50% were married couples, 25% single women, 11% unmarried couples, and 10% single men; single women now outnumber single men among single homeowners. Sunderji says the relationship runs both ways. Marriage and fertility have declined globally, including in places where home prices have not risen as dramatically, so housing cannot explain everything. In the United States, however, expensive housing is tangled up with cultural changes and delayed milestones. People are leaving parents’ homes, forming partnerships, and establishing independent households later. Scanlon similarly says that “25 is the new 18”: longer, healthier lives may make delayed adulthood more normal, but institutions and expectations have not fully adjusted. The discussion also addresses social-media expectations. Scott wonders whether Instagram normalizes lives in Manhattan’s West Village, Beverly Hills, or Los Angeles and makes ordinary housing feel like failure. Scanlon says expectations are certainly inflated, though she does not think Instagram is the core driver. Sunderji argues that people also have legitimate reasons to want cities: economic activity and networks are concentrated there. He nevertheless says smartphones expose people constantly to more lavish lifestyles and likely harm mental health. He adds that income inequality intensifies competition for the same limited urban land: highly paid workers compete with teachers and other lower-paid residents for housing.

When asked for one policy each, Scanlon chooses zoning reform, especially changes to rules about sidewalks, yards, lot sizes, and where housing may be built. Sunderji agrees that zoning is the beginning of the process because illegal housing cannot be built, but he rejects it as a complete solution. He quotes an 1856 New York Times passage complaining about high rents, scarce housing, and landlords’ “exorbitant rates,” arguing that the crisis has existed for centuries in productive, desirable cities. Sunderji’s broader explanation emphasizes income inequality, infrastructure, debt, zoning, and the cost of construction acting together. He worries that inheritance will reinforce existing inequality rather than spread housing evenly. Scanlon and Sunderji also agree that smaller starter homes are needed. Builders often earn more from large homes, and minimum lot sizes established decades ago prevent homes from becoming smaller or lots from being subdivided. Sunderji says builders have recently begun responding to the crisis by reducing home sizes, and he hopes legislation allowing subdivision in places such as New York and California will continue. Sunderji disputes the claim that blue states are simply overregulated while red states build freely. Dense, high-income, highly educated, economically productive cities are difficult to build in because of their physical and economic characteristics, and those cities often happen to vote Democratic. New York is hemmed in by water, highly dense, and full of people competing for limited land. He says reducing the explanation to “blue equals regulation equals expensive housing” is politically compelling but does not survive the data. Scott concludes that multiple pilot programs and reforms must be pursued simultaneously, because housing is affecting wealth, psychological well-being, marriage, and family formation.