Luke Howland, 24, moved back in with his parents this year. It wasn’t part of the plan.
Loading audio narration…
At 19, while many people his age were heading to college, Howland used his savings from high school jobs to open an electric bike retail store in Flagstaff, Arizona. After selling the business last year and moving out of the retail space where he also lived, he found himself back in his childhood home.
“For someone who has been on their own for so long and found success in business, I kind of acquired this ego in myself,” Howland told me.
Returning to his parents’ house was a tough decision, he said, but the right one. It’s made his relationship with his family stronger, and not having roommates — something he would likely need to do to afford rent in Arizona — has helped him stay focused on his goals. Without rent payments, he’s also been able to save money to put towards eventually buying a home of his own.
“I’m lucky enough to be able to move back in with my parents,” Howland said. “Even though I sold the business and was able to make some money from it, it just didn’t make sense to get right back into a lease or an apartment before I found another job or created another business.”
Howland is far from the only one moving back in with mom and dad. A 2025 Pew Research study found that in 2023, 18% of adults ages 25 to 34 lived with their parents. Young men were more likely than young women to do so, at 20% compared with 15%.
For many young adults, the decision is a financial strategy. As the job market tightens and wages lag behind housing costs, living with parents is a way to cut living expenses and work toward longer-term goals, such as starting a business or pursuing homeownership.
Still, moving back home doesn’t necessarily speed up the path to homeownership. A 2019 Urban Institute study found that adults who lived with their parents between the ages of 25 and 34 were less likely to become homeowners or household heads a decade later, which could hurt their long-term financial success.
“Since 2019, increasing rents and housing prices and increasing mortgage interest rates have made it even harder for young adults who are co-residing to move out and form their own households, further pushing back marriage and childbearing projects,” Arthur Acolin, an associate professor in the Runstad Department of Real Estate at the University of Washington, told Business Insider.
Howland, who turns 25 next year, is determined not to become a statistic. When I asked him what he thought about the Urban Institute’s study and his prospects of becoming a homeowner someday, he told me moving home was part of setting himself up to succeed and that he’s determined to become a homeowner sooner rather than later.
“There’s definitely an argument to be made that people who move back home can become complacent, but I think it depends on the person,” he said. “For me personally, I have active motivation to leave and work toward homeownership.”
He’s given himself a two-year deadline to fly the coop.
