2026 NextGen Homebuyer Report: How You're Built to Buy
Money, trust and the meaning of home among Gen Z and Millennial adults. Why good financial habits do not settle the worry, and what that costs the industry.
September 2026
63% of regular savers still worry about their finances
- 86%
- carry some financial shame
- 54%
- worry a professional will take advantage of them
- 60%
- find the information overwhelming
About the report
Every year this series has asked what young adults believe about buying a home. This edition asks the question underneath that one: how they are built around money in the first place. How it feels to them, whether they lean toward it or away from it, how hard they judge themselves for it, and what they believe they can do.
Nearly 1,000 U.S. adults aged 18 to 44 answered a set of plain statements about money, fielded in two rounds in September 2026. The findings separate financial habits from financial feelings, and the gap between them is wider than the industry assumes. Buyers who save every month carry the same worry and the same suspicion as everyone else, and it arrives in the first conversation before anyone has said a number out loud.
The report comes with a companion assessment at builtlikethat.co, where the same four measures place a person in one of sixteen builds. The quiz is being refined with every person who takes it, and the report is the first publication of the research behind it.
Key insights
- Habits do not settle the worry66% worry about their finances even when things are going well, and among people who can save or invest most months it is still 63%. Among those earning $100,000 or more, 64%.
- Shame keeps the questions unasked86% agree with at least one shame statement. 57% have avoided asking for help with money because of how it would look, and half of them had already talked to an agent or a lender.
- Good money habits do not buy trust54% worry a mortgage professional might try to take advantage of them. Among people who budget and save most months the number is identical.
- Overwhelm is stalling the first conversation60% say there is so much homebuying information that it is overwhelming, and 37% have put off talking to a professional because of it.
- Belief survives all of it64% believe that if they set a money goal they can find a way to reach it, and 34% hold that belief alongside feeling they have failed. Five builds account for three-fifths of the people surveyed, and every one of them believes they can get there.
Method
Two online surveys fielded through Pollfish on September 2, 2026, 500 responses each, 943 retained after quality screening. Questions on shame, self-belief and help preferences were asked in the second survey only (n=491). Percentages are unweighted and describe the people surveyed, who include current owners and a range of purchase plans. No margin of error is claimed and the sample is not presented as nationally representative.