Coldwell Banker, the century-old American real estate brokerage (founded in 1906 and now part of Compass International Holdings), has published its 2026 American Dream Report, based on a Harris Poll of 2,060 US adults surveyed in early September. The headline reads that 82% of parents of children aged five and under are saving, or have considered saving, for their child’s future home down payment. It is a lovely, slightly dizzying thought: families planning for a front door before their children can reliably tie their shoelaces.
Read the small print first
That 82% needs careful reading. It combines parents who are actively saving with parents who have merely considered it. The report is clearer further down: 14% of parents of children aged five and under have actually started saving for a down payment, compared with 20% saving for college and 28% saving for their own retirement. So the headline measures a mood, not a savings rate. Moods count, and a mood this widespread says something real about how people think about housing. It would be unfair to dismiss it. It would also be a mistake to imagine four in five young families already have money in a jar labelled “first flat.”
The survey was commissioned by a brokerage with an interest in encouraging purchases, and it covers a general sample of US adults, not luxury buyers. That context matters when we stretch its meaning.
What the numbers do show
Plenty, as it happens. Among all parents, a child’s future down payment (56%) now sits beside college (51%) and a first car (49%) as something they have considered paying for. The enthusiasm is strongest among younger parents: 85% of Gen Z and 82% of Millennial parents have considered or begun saving, against 70% of Gen X and 51% of Baby Boomers.
Family money is also becoming part of the deal. Fifteen percent of homeowners received help from relatives or friends toward a down payment, rising to 26% among Gen Z homeowners, and 71% of those recipients say they are expected to pay it back, so this is as much a loan as a gift. Half of Americans have helped fund, or considered funding, a relative’s down payment. And 7% have bought or are buying a home with a friend or other non-romantic partner, up from 4% last year.
Meanwhile the dream itself is startlingly practical. When asked to picture the dream home, people name enough bedrooms for everyone (36%), a big kitchen (34%) and a large backyard (33%). Among Gen Z non-owners, 92% want to buy someday, and 28% say they would choose a dream home over a dream job, while 25% would choose it over finding their ideal partner. At the same time, 63% say buying in the next year would leave them house-poor. Desire is running far ahead of affordability.
Where this meets the luxury world
For a blog about the high end, why does this matter? Because of what Coldwell Banker’s president, Mary Lee Blaylock, points to: the great wealth transfer. The company says Gen X and Millennials stand to inherit a large share of nearly $2.4 trillion in US real estate wealth over the next decade, and she notes that this is already reshaping the luxury market. That is plausible, and it ties in with what we saw in Redfin’s numbers, where demand at the top of the market is holding prices up while the middle struggles.
The Map to Modern Luxury
THE CURATED CALENDAR
Discover the world’s most prestigious gatherings & exhibitionsThink about the two ends of the housing picture. At one end, parents imagine small deposits and family loans to help children into a modest first home. At the other, families treat property as a legacy: a villa that stays in the family, a house with a story, a place where three generations gather. The luxury travel industry has noticed. Mandarin Oriental’s collection of private homes is full of houses with nine bedrooms and room for 18, aimed squarely at multigenerational groups. Real estate, in both cases, is a way of holding a family together across time.
There is a gentle lesson in the contrast. The affluent have always planned this way, through trusts, long-held estates and the sort of patient capital that prefers a house to a stock. What is new is how widely the instinct has spread. When parents of toddlers dream about their children’s front doors, homeownership is being treated less as a purchase and more as an inheritance in the making.
None of this is financial advice, naturally, and a survey about feelings cannot tell anyone how much to save. But it does explain something about the market. The dream of a home is deep, durable and increasingly multigenerational, while the means to reach it are stretched. That gap is where family money, co-buying and inherited wealth are stepping in, and it is why the top and bottom of the housing market can seem to be living in different countries.
