Turns out, younger people live their lives, and have always done so.
By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.
The average age of first-time home buyers has essentially not changed since 2012, and compared to the early 2000s, it has declined marginally. In 2024, the average age of first-time buyers rose to 36.3 years, from 35.7 years in 2023, but was below 2021 and 2022.
For the past 13 years, the average age has been in the range between 35.5 years (2016 low) and 36.4 years (2022 and 2021 high), and this range was lower than in the early 2000s, when the average age of first-time buyers (FTBs) was at 37.9 years (blue in the chart).
“And so, despite the financial challenges in transitioning from renting to owning, over the past decade households have managed the transition at essentially the same average age,” the NY Fed’s analysis said, based on NY Fed Consumer Credit Panel/Equifax data (chart by the New York Fed):
But the average age of repeat buyers – those buyers who buy a home for the second-plus time – has increased by 3.5 years over the two-decade time span, to 47.9 years in 2024, from 44.4 years in 2003 and 2004, despite the 0.5-year decline from the high in 2019 of 48.4 years (brown in the chart above).
The share of home purchases by first-time buyers has also increased over the past decade, with drops in some years and gains in others.
In 2020 and 2021, the share of FTB home purchases dropped because homebuying went into a frenzy, and the purchase volume of non-FTBs soared. But then the frenzy froze over, purchases of existing homes plunged, while FTBs kept at it, kept buying, and their share increased again to 35% of total home purchases in 2023, according to a NY Fed analysis in February.
The FTB share of mortgages to purchase a home has also increased over the past decade to 51% by 2023, up from 40% at the low point in 2005 through 2007.
FTBs are important to the housing market and to inventory for sale, and the entire industry is watching them and is praying for them, because they actually represent incremental new demand by taking inventory for sale off the market without putting inventory on the market.
But many repeat buyers – such as families that move – don’t represent new demand; they’re just swapping homes, they sell a home to buy a home, thereby adding one home to the inventory for sale and taking one home off the inventory, and so overall have no impact on inventory (+1 -1 =0).
Obviously, many younger people are eager to buy a home, but that has always been the case, and eventually they buy a home, and that has also always been the case. And the average age at which they do that hasn’t changed much either, and has actually declined a little since 2000. And that makes sense because younger people live their lives, and have always done so.
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Such a great point and true to the date. Millennials are going to Boom into this age range over the next 10-15 years. Inflation is here to stay as Millennials start buying more homes as they enter late 30s, 40s.
Did you actually read the article? The article made no such point.
If you’re still waiting for Millennials to suddenly show up and buy, you missed the train. Many of them already bought. Millennials are already repeat buyers. The average age of Millennials is already higher than the average age of FTBs.
GenZers are the new buyers that are coming up. Boomers and the prior generation are exiting this housing market and the world. And lots of new construction is piling on the market, and those deals appeal to FTBs.
Much better than I expected with rising costs over the decades.
It would be interesting to see how much code, zoning, utilities hookups, permits etc have added into cost of a new house over the last 40/50 years.
I’d argue the new home is built (if done correctly naturally) is a far superior product and way more upscale than my 1955 home I purchased. Or have methods managed to contain costs. I dont know.
There is just no comparison to what the consumer settled for then in even a low end house compared to today.
I watch these new homes go up that have stapled foam in place of wood sheathing. Vinyl siding in place of brick. I can’t agree with you.
8t – mebbe examine scientific evolution of ‘strength of materials’ vs. ‘durability of materials’ and the usage decisions made at the time incorporating the known in both both factors…
may we all find a better day.
Boomers are in the market for only time pine box construction.
Go long pines?
Great stuff!
I came to the states in 1998, right when real estate prices started going up, up, up.
1/ Would be interesting to see those graphs going into the 70ies. I still would not expect much difference in graphs though — prices were better, but mortgage requirements — stricter. Very curious though.
2/ FTBs represent new demand, but LTBs (people selling and leaving the market — renting, etc) represent boost to supply (in addition to new construction). I can’t imagine how one would get that data, but also would be curious to see that churn — people entering and leaving housing market.
“GenZers are the new buyers that are coming up.” think this is especially true for really HCOL areas like SoCal…hell, keep this price insanity going, and up every year…then it will just be boomers that are buying and selling to each other since they own the most wealth out of any generation..
This data is contrary to all that we hear on MSM. I saw a graph recently on the % of 30 year old’s who are married and own a home. Reduced from 70% in 1950 to 12% in 2025. Wonder where that data came from.
You’re comparing dissimilar data. You mentioned “30 year old’s who are MARRIED and own a home” (emphasis mine). Wolf’s article didn’t mention anything about the home buyer’s marriage status. Rates of marriage in this country have fallen off a cliff since the 1970’s… for obvious reasons.
This data is based on actual purchase and credit data (Equifax).
And it has zero to do with marriage. The age at which people marry, if they marry at all, has moved out a lot over the decades. I don’t know why you drag this into here.
Tougher house pricing has 2 off-setting effects – neither of which appear in your data.
Higher earners delay a few years making average age higher.
Lower earners just never buy – making average age actually Lower (and total purchases smaller).
Your chart neatly shows the cancelling out and pretends nothing is going on.
You need to include at least total purchases in any analysis
The key point is “married”
The percentage of married 30 year olds has dropped
Both could be true. Wolf’s data covers the average age of first time buyers. It doesn’t say anything about the percentage of the population that is buying homes.
The second chart shows the first-time buyers as a percent of all home purchases.
…historic sidebar to the ‘1950’ start date of NR’s anecdotal graph-at that time, the U.S. was in the middle of a strong postwar economy for a very large cohort of younger Americans eligible for ‘VA-FHA’ home loans (can still recall in my SoCal youth that term on countless billboards over the years colorfully, and bigly, advertising the parade of subdivisions arising out of former-farm/pasture or otherwise ‘undeveloped’ land…), an inconstant situation that, lacking its own data points, would demand great care in any extrapolations from said graph…
may we all find a better day
36 is too old to be buying a house if you have a family. The ideal age to buy a home is around 28, I would say, but the downpayment requirements make that impractical for many, unfortunately. There is no limit to the ways traditional capitalism shafts society.
The average age wasn’t 28 since Adam and Eve.
I often see a data set from NAR that says the median age of first time home buyers has been increasing. Why are these charts so different?
This is based on actual purchase and credit data (Equifax). NAR’s figure is based on what its Realtors out in the field reported to NAR over the years. In addition, NAR is a lobbying group for Realtors.
Hmm so the Equifax data would miss homes that are bought, let’s say, by a parent, but for all intents and purposes it is used as their child’s house. Any sense of how much of an impact this would have on the data?
Your question doesn’t make sense. If the parents buy a home, the parents are the buyers, and they’re not first-time buyers but repeat buyers.
If you count those parent-bought homes as kid-bought homes, and as first-time buyer homes, then the share of first-time buyers would even higher than it is.
Interesting data! Wolf could you please share the Fed’s data? It is so counter to what the narrative says where no young people can afford homes. Or is average purchase price also dropping?
This is based on actual purchase and credit data (Equifax), as spelled out in the article. Links are provided in the article.
We’ve heard from plenty of millennials here in the comments that have bought homes, and we’ve heard from parents whose millennial kids have bought homes. Many millennials are making tons of money. They’re running companies, they’re in charge, they’re out there doing stuff.
Yes, affordability is low. But it’s not much worse than it was in 2005, see the Atlanta Fed affordability tracker — unfortunately, it doesn’t go back further. And people are still buying homes.
Wolf,
As near as I can figure, this data is
based on mortgages in credit reports,
and not “actual purchases”. Even with
this being a subset of sales, it’s a very
large subset, and surely closer to the
truth than NAR’s survey data.
J.
This doesn’t tell you the percentage of 30 year olds buying a home. The percent of 30 year olds buying homes could increase if home sales decrease, or home sale stay flat with increased population. Not enough data here to determine.
On the other hand the average age of getting married and of having kids get steadily older (or never).
Presumably because the financial burden of 1 parent funding house and kids is too much.
If you wait until you can “afford kids,” you’ll never have them. My dad’s advice and 100% correct.
“Presumably because the financial burden of 1 parent funding house and kids is too much.”
LOL, my generation already didn’t want to and didn’t have 3.8 kids on average, because we already had easy and widely available methods of birth control, including or especially women. Boomers were the first generation to come of age with the pill. The average fertility rate for people of my vintage dropped to 2 kids per woman. Fertility rates have continued to drop. Fertility rates have dropped globally for many decades. Easy and widely available methods of birth control have a lot to do with it. Now pregnancy is actually a choice, rather than something that just keeps happening over and over again.
As I’ve posted repeatedly. The median household income for prime homebuyers’ age group (35-45) is $110k+ and that supports a pretty median home payment. No you can’t buy a townhouse in Manhattan or a SFR in North Beach, but a pretty typical $400-$500k home is doable for a pretty typical 35 year old household.
Notably the percentage of FTB’s and their market share are as high as they were after the bust, indicating that affordability is on par with 15 years ago for those households.
Those waiting for another 2008 housing depression will keep on waiting.
If this data had come from anyone but Wolf, I would have said Fake News but then I thought about it more.
I bought my first home at 27 but that was 32 years ago. I was kind of an outlier in my hometown being college educated and having spent the previous 5 years eating Macaroni and Cheese while I built a small business.
Even then, most of my other friends from High School were just starting to look for a first house and at that time, $40K could get you a 2-bedroom starter home.
My parents, boomers, were 35 and 33 when they bought their first house.
My paternal grandparents were 32 and 28.
My maternal grandparents were 35 and 32
The numbers make sense. A college grad in her early 20’s doesn’t make real money until their late 20’s. Saving a tidy sum for a down payment takes time while one is paying rent. The below 30 buyers that I have come across have all had substantial help from parents.
Another old timer……Viet Nam war era……bought first home with GI loan…$24K, no down payment. About $80 monthly payments. Was great….now 96 andpeeking over the edge.
Tom
Would be interesting to see what first time homebuyers are buying.
Specifically, the split between homes and condos over time, assuming this data captures both types of purchases.
I know from my friends that aging people have become condo or co-op buyers because they’re easier to deal with (no stairs, nothing outdoors to take care of, etc.). They sold their house and bought a condo/co-op. Some buildings cater to these down-sizers. I sold my own beautiful bachelor-pad 1,800 sf condo to a couple like that back in 2000.
The second time home buyer age is increasing because they
financed mortgages with negative interest rates gifted by the Great Bernanke and the Fed for 10 plus years. They are locked in their first house or second house if they refinanced. To buy a house today would in some cases double their mortgage payment plus it takes a larger mortgage to buy the same house because of how the Fed inflated asset prices.
Their is lesson to be learned here and it is sometimes you should look a gift horse in the mouth. The Fed has never ever been your friend.
There’s a couple additional factors. Once you’ve got skin in the housing game, you’re pretty much in. Outside overheated big city markets, housing valuation doesn’t matter all that much outside of a bust, because if you are moving because you have more equity towards your next purchase. Yes you can sell and cash out now and wait for the next downturn while renting, but once you are established, most people want to keep those luxuries – your own yard, no shared walls, garages, no landlord, and so on.
Two big things are keeping repeat buyers as a lower percentage – the first touched on plenty here is the sub-4 mortgages. I certainly won’t be selling my house any time soon, partly because of those savings. The second part hasn’t been touched on, which is the necessity to move or sell. Some of these things remain the same like space for kids, safety/security, or big upgrades. However, the employment part of the equation has been heavily impacted by the post-covid era of remote work.
Both me and my wife have switched jobs in the past five years and we don’t need to move because we both work remote. A much higher percentage of high earning professionals with good pay can now work remotely, so they no longer have to move if they take a job in a different city or state. My “office” is in Maryland, 8 hours from me, and the majority of my wife’s clients are 3 hours away. Previously our work sites were 12 and 14 miles. Repeat homebuyers often move out of necessity and not desire.
Howdy Folks. Purchased 1st house at age 20. Old now and retired and currently homeless. Homeless is more fun……
Tail end of the boomers here. Bought my first house at 25 (just out of law school), my second at 33 (and rented for a couple of years before that because I had moved locations and didn’t want to buy right away), and my current house at 38 (needed more room for kid number 3, who is 10 years younger than kid number 1). And added a lakehouse several years ago at the age of 62 (that’ll skew those repeat buyer numbers up).