AUSTIN, Texas – With Mother’s Day approaching, nearly 3 million owner-occupied homes across the country have at least two mothers living under one roof among the nearly 4 million multigenerational households, according to a new Realtor.com report.
The report finds that multigenerational living is quietly reshaping American housing demand, with sellers asking for 65% more for multigenerational homes amid high competition, especially in southern and eastern markets where supply is thin.
Multigenerational houses are homes whose descriptions include keywords such as “guest house,” “in-law suite” or “granny-flat.”
“Multigenerational living is a meaningful force in the housing market,” said Hannah Jones, senior economic research analyst at Realtor.com. “A sense of shared purpose and care is at the heart of multigenerational living, a housing arrangement that is quietly shaping American family life. What stands out in this data is that buyers are not being deterred by the higher price tags. The demand is strong, and in a few parts of the country, the supply is struggling to keep up.”
In 2024, 4.5% of all owner-occupied households were multigenerational, defined as containing three or more generations, which was up from 4.3% in 2019. The typical multigenerational household includes five people sharing a four-bedroom home, with a median annual household income of $131,000.
Multigenerational Homes Are Not Cheap, and Demand Is High
In 2025, the median list price for a multigenerational house on Realtor.com was $709,000, roughly 65% higher than the $429,900 median for a standard listing. Some of the premium is due to the fact that multigenerational homes are typically larger. However, even on a per-square-foot basis, these homes ask $262 per square foot, compared with $215 for standard homes, a 22% premium driven by specialized features such as in-law suites, secondary kitchens and dual entries, as well as their concentration in high-cost coastal markets.
Even with higher price tags, multigenerational listings received 13.5% more page views than standard homes and sold in the same median time frame of 59 days. This suggests demand is keeping pace with the higher price point.
Multigenerational households reflect the diversity of American family life. Among owner-occupied multigenerational households, 44.9% are White, 25.8% are Hispanic, 13.5% are Black and 11.1% are Asian. The arrangement is most prevalent in urban markets in the West and along the East Coast.
“While the share of multigenerational households held steady over the past decade, the number of families choosing to live this way grew from 3.2 million to 3.9 million between 2014 and 2024, a sign that multigenerational living is becoming an increasingly common choice for American families as high housing and child care costs create strong reasons for co-living,” said Jiayi Xu, an economist at Realtor.com.