Is the property market ‘frozen’, as some commentators might suggest? Recent research by Cotality found a considerable degree of flexibility among todays’ homebuyers.
Cotality asked recent and future buyers across five markets what they would trade to secure a mortgage. The answers came back more precise and more flexible than the frozen-market story suggests:
- 78 per cent of Gen Z homebuyers would cut lifestyle spending to afford a home;
- 40 per cent of Gen Z future homebuyers are waiting on a specific mortgage rate to buy; and
- 46 per cent of recent homebuyers said purchase decisions are driven by life events
Homebuyers in 2026 are finding the straight lines are gone, that access feels steeper now — prices, rates, deposits, everything. So, they are strategically bending. They’re cutting costs, taking smaller loans, and buying smaller homes, all in service of getting to a monthly payment number that, for many of them, feels just out of reach.
The report is based on a survey of homebuyers across five markets — the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand — split between recent buyers (purchased within the past five years) and future buyers (intending to purchase within two years). Across all five of those markets, buyers were found to be adapting, sacrificing, and, in many cases, finding a way through.
What are most homebuyers looking for? In all five markets, buyers say a lower interest rate.
Yet despite that, the data reveals that buyers are still making the mathematics work, as indicated by the continual annual growth in the number of mortgage originations. While people have an ideal rate that makes a mortgage comfortable, they are willing to be flexible to realize the dream of homeownership. Each generation bends differently, however.
Interestingly, the younger buyers were found more willing to accept higher rates, which the report suggests is because they have never known low rates, whereas older borrowers have a sense of what a mortgage ‘should’ cost. Despite that, the rates they all actually secure are much closer together than those generational memories might suggest. Gen Z borrowers tend to pay slightly higher rates, but differences between age cohorts are generally less than 0.2 percentage points and small beside the much larger shifts in mortgage rates over time.
That increase is small but suggests some buyers are mortgaging their expectations and lifestyles to make ownership work, rather than waiting for the market to bend all the way back to the rates they would prefer.
Another interesting finding was what influenced buyer motivation. Among recent buyers, the thing that most convinced them to stop browsing and start applying were life events such as a baby on the way, or a job offer in another city. In other words, life pushed them into the market, and they took whatever rate was available at the time.
The full report is available for download from the Cotality website.