At this point, almost nobody in the United States is unaware that the housing market is a nightmare. And now, the National Association of Realtors, or NAR, has released a report that backs up Americans’ complaints with numbers and data. The most glaring number in the report is the average age of a homebuyer, which is now the highest it’s ever been.
Just last year, in 2023, the average age of a homebuyer was 49. In 2024, it’s skyrocketed to 56.
The US housing market is a disaster, and the demographic shifts prove it. The only people who have money anymore are getting older and older while the rest of us are floundering, wondering if we’re ever going to be able to create lives of our own in our own homes.
If that’s what you’ve been feeling, the new report reflects it, as the median age for a first-time homebuyer has jumped from 35 to 38. The share of sales by first-time homebuyers has plummeted to 24 percent, the lowest percentage since the NAR started tracking data in 1981.
The reasons younger people are struggling are all ones you could’ve guessed. Astronomical home prices, skyrocketing mortgage rates, and of course everyone below 40 is saddled with student debt and crippling rent that prevents them from saving. Let’s not forget about the fact that hedge funds have swarmed the housing market, snatching up homes and affordable neighborhoods across the country and driving up prices.
It certainly doesn’t help that the median US home price is somewhere around $435,000. Prices skyrocketed by 39 percent since 2020 all while average mortgage rates exceed 6 percent. For younger buyers, handing over the national average down payment on a home, currently sitting at around $78,300, is roughly equal to their entire annual income.
That is simply unfeasible and untenable. Even worse, the report says that people over 40 who can somehow scrape together a down payment find themselves being outbid anyway by older, much richer buyers who use the money from the sale of homes they currently own to buy new property. Repeat homebuyers are snatching up every available property because they’re flush with cash while everyone else has to stay living at home with their parents or several roommates as they approach 40.
Some other fairly discouraging numbers from the report are that buyers are overwhelmingly white, with 83 percent of buyers overall being white, which is a jump from 81 percent last year. Only 7% of recent buyers identified as Black, only 6 percent identified as Hispanic, 4 percent as Asian, and only 3 percent as some other ethnicity.
The post Average Age of US First-Time Homebuyers Hits an All-Time High appeared first on VICE.
The post Average Age of US First-Time Homebuyers Hits an All-Time High appeared first on VICE.
