My twenty-sonething niece and her husband bought a modest, fixer-upper house outside of Philadelphia. Here's how they were able to do that. They worked hard in high school and got scholarships so they graduated without student loan debt. They are both engineers, so their starting salaries out of college were around six figures each. Instead of having a fancy wedding, they had a dinner with their immediate family and used the money their parents were going to contribute to pay for the wedding toward their down payment. Now they're hunting for investment property. They will be 30 next year. They are my heroes.