First-time homebuyers are older these days

Sales of existing homes fell last month, according to data out today from the National Association of Realtors. They’re down 4% from September, and almost 15% from a year earlier.

Prices, meanwhile, keep climbing. Nationally the median home price is now almost $392,000 dollars. Is it any wonder then that it’s taking people longer to buy a home?

The median age of first-time homebuyers is now 35 — up from 29 in 1981. And the median age of all homebuyers is now 49, up from 31 in 1981. And there are a bunch of reasons it’s taking people longer to buy homes now than it used to.

“Housing prices have gone up much more than incomes have over the last 40 years,” said Jenny Schuetz, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “That means both that you have to have higher income to be able to afford the monthly mortgage payments, but also that it’s going to take a bigger down payment to get into homeownership.”

So people have to work and save often for many more years.

And more young people are going to college now than a few decades ago, which means they’re starting their working lives later and, Schuetz said, taking on more debt. 

“This is really important because in addition to the income needed to qualify for a mortgage and having the savings for down payment, lenders also look at your debt to income ratio,” she said.

And the more you’re spending on student loans, the less you have for a down payment or a mortgage.

All of that has been true for a while. Then came the pandemic and the huge run-up in home prices and mortgage rates. 

Brandi Snowden, director of member and consumer survey research at the National Association of Realtors, said to get into the market now, you need to make a lot more money than you did even just a couple of years ago.

“Just between 2021 and 2022, for first time homebuyers, household incomes rose nearly $25,000, just from that previous year,” she said.

The median household income for first-time homebuyers is now nearly $96,000 dollars.

That’s well over the national median income, which is about $75,000 dollars.

“This surge over the past two years has just been such a shock to the affordability levels of potential homebuyers,” said Daniel McCue, senior research associate at Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies.

He said the longer people have to wait to become homeowners, the less time they have to build equity and wealth.

And, the more pressure there is on the rental market, too. 

“Which kind of is a self-perpetuating system, because when rents go up, it’s harder for younger people to save up that down payment, because they’re spending so much money on their rent,” McCue said.

Which could mean it takes even longer before renters can become homeowners.