Millennials Love Zillow Because They’ll Never Own a Home

Real estate apps and Instagram accounts have become a digital fantasyland for broke millennials

Photo: Corcoran/Zillow

The apartment I found on Zillow has cornflower blue walls and original details, with crown molding still intact — a rarity among today’s bleached and flavorless condo renovations. It has picture windows and a functional fireplace, and it’s only a couple blocks from Prospect Park. It isn’t perfect; the kitchen is mismatched and hideous, and the second of the two bedrooms is minuscule, little more than a walk-in closet with a window. But it’s big enough for a small child, and the place is charming, well-cared-for, and modestly sized without being a grim shoebox.

It would be perfect for my husband and me and our dog and even a kid if we decided to have one. I can envision our bed frame and the little armchair in the bedroom next to the window and my favorite of the framed art we own in the dining area. I imagine how I would renovate the kitchen, replacing the metallic backsplash with sunny yellow tile, installing old-fashioned cabinets and a checkered floor.

But the apartment costs $850,000, not including homeowners association fees ($570), home insurance ($298), and property taxes ($460). The total monthly cost, according to Zillow, would be $4,546. A 20% down payment would be $170,000; a lower down payment, while possible, would carry with it mortgage insurance and, likely, higher interest.

Despite the apartment’s humble size and middle-class appearance, owning it is an impossibility. A daydream, nothing more. Millennials are less likely to buy a home than previous generations were between the ages of 25 and 39, and it isn’t because we don’t want to. Research shows that we do.

But as homeownership becomes less of a reality and more of an illusion, many of us resort to merely imagining ourselves in our own homes via the internet. Websites like Zillow, StreetEasy, and Realtor.com or real estate-dedicated Instagram accounts like @circahouses or @cheapoldhouses allow many of us to daydream about the security and stability that we could have if we could buy a home. Meanwhile, we’re stuck renting, which, even with a decent landlord, research shows is destabilizing and mentally unhealthy compared with homeownership.

“The only thing that makes me feel less mad about all the pretty houses I walk by that I look up to see I can’t afford is how fugly the interiors are via StreetEasy,” says Laura, a digital strategist in New York who requested anonymity. “When I see an interesting-looking building, I always look it up. I want to know how much it’s ‘worth’ and how much it has appreciated over time. But also to see what ugly ass shit the current owners have done with the inside.”

I do this as well but on Instagram instead of Zillow or StreetEasy. I’ve followed real estate Instagram accounts for a while now, daydreaming about buying a gorgeous Craftsman in Pasadena or a farmhouse in Tennessee, but it wasn’t until I found @sf_daily_photo that my ogling became a full-blown obsession.

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I love and hate this account because it portrays one of the things I want most in the world — a house in San Francisco — in its worst possible state: bought, possibly with cash by a wealthy techie who then gut-renovates the soul out of it. Unlike the Zillow home I mentioned above, where many of the apartment’s beautiful original details are modernized to contemporary tastes without sacrificing the home’s original personality, SF Daily Photos shows homes that have been renovated beyond recognizability. What was once a gorgeous home that survived over a century’s worth of earthquakes and likely just needed a little TLC becomes, in the hands of a rich techie, an in-home Apple Store—all for the low, low price of $2 million!

SF Daily Photos represents today’s real estate market at its most exaggerated. Across the country, the housing supply isn’t keeping up with rapidly expanding demand. This trend is especially pronounced in places like San Francisco, where the housing shortage has become an all-out crisis. But even in areas where real estate is more reasonable, homeownership is still out of reach for most millennials.

Alex Bordelon, an editor based in New Haven, Connecticut, says he browses Zillow for brownstones and other old homes in cities he’d love to live in, like Chicago, London, or Edinburgh, or small houses in the country, which he dreams about remodeling with his partner. “Ultimately [I browse for] just a space where I can have friends over and have a dog but not McMansion Hell large,” he says. “It can be a little stressful and/or depressing because I don’t know how feasible it would be to own a house as a millennial with student debt.”

Maybe it isn’t all bad that we’re filling our heads with daydreams about restored Queen Annes in Portland, Oregon, or Victorian-era cottages in Michigan. TaylorRose Walsh, a graduate student in New York, says that she finds looking at real estate listings inspiring. “It helps me stay motivated as a young person who feels very far away from getting on the property ladder,” she says. “I feel like if I have a good grasp of where I’d like to live one day, it helps me set concrete career and financial goals — even if I never reach my desired income level, I think it’s healthy to stay inspired.” She acknowledges that it can be an occasionally masochistic activity, but says “it’s good to dream.”

Jasmine Fardouly, a research fellow at the Center for Emotional Health at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, says that aspiring to things you may not achieve has complex outcomes depending on the person. “Although upward comparisons can be inspiring, they seem to more often lead to deflation and low mood. Judging others to be better off than oneself often leads to negative outcomes, particularly if the level of achievement seems unattainable,” she says. “Although browsing unaffordable homes may be inspiring for some, it is likely to have a negative impact on others who are focused on evaluating their own housing situation against others on Instagram.”

Research on other forms of fantasy, such as weight loss fantasies, suggests that the hours many of us spend staring at Zillow listings and dreaming about purchasing one might even be setting us back from achieving it. A 2012 study looked at how women in large bodies anticipated their weight loss, and it found that those who expected to lose weight lost more than control groups while those who fantasized about weight loss lost less. One explanation for this result is that expectations encourage us to pursue goals while fantasies are mentally satiating enough that we don’t follow through. Real estate stalking on Zillow and Instagram may fill the same purpose: It could drive some people toward achieving the goal of homeownership, crappy economy be damned. For others, however, the fantasizing may be just another obstacle among many.

Either way, it’s clear that inequality is having negative effects on millennials’ mental health. And homeownership — the marker of financial and personal success in American society — is a big part of that.

Renting does not have to be absolute misery. I love my apartment, and my landlords are decent and fair. But, while I appreciate my landlords’ decency and our low rent compared to market rate, I’m so afraid they’ll jack up the price that I won’t even ask for them to fix the living room heater.

The instability and lack of control associated with renting is bad for your health. Meanwhile, homeownership (at least in the housing system we’ve currently devised) seems to have fewer health repercussions. A 2012 study of urban homeowners found that they had better mental health than renters because they feel a greater sense of control in their lives — and that’s because they actually do. Part of the appeal of the homeownership dream is that it’s supposed to be achievable. Work hard, save a little, buy a house. It is increasingly clear that this is not a permanent fixture of American life, but rather a luxury that was specific to the postwar period and the following decades. It all ended with the financial crisis of 2008, which did two things: It ripped the facade off the lie we called the American dream, being as it was in large part a result of people being tricked into buying homes they couldn’t afford, and it paved the way for an acceleration of income inequality that is felt most acutely by people of color and millennials.

In the face of economic instability and personal financial insecurity, what are the things that most young people still have control over? What we click on. What we look at. What we daydream about. And so Zillow or Instagram step in, where fantasies about more stable lives are more possible than actually achieving them.

Most of us, whether our parents were homeowners or not, were taught that buying a home is the real sign that you’ve made it. In America, once you own a home, you’re a real adult. You’ve reached the pinnacle of moderate, feasible success — not massive wealth, not a yacht, not a chateau in the French Alps. Just a home, of any size, to call your own. But, while homeownership may be the cornerstone of the American dream, for many millennials, it’s nothing more than a Zillow-based fantasy that seems more distant with each passing year.