A generation ago the typical first-time American homebuyer was in their late twenties; today, NAR says the median has hit a record 40, priced out and waiting — and first-time buyers now make up the smallest share of the market ever measured

The obvious reading of a first-time homebuyer reaching a median age of 40 is that young Americans are waiting longer by choice, renting into their late thirties, delaying the whole project of settling down. The data, however, points the other way. The National Association of REALTORS reported in November 2025 that the first-time buyer share of the market fell to 21%, the lowest figure since the association began tracking.

In the same 2025 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers, covering transactions between July 2024 and June 2025, NAR put the median age of a first-time buyer at a record 40, up from 38 the year before and roughly the late twenties in the early 1980s.

What NAR describes as the cause is scarcity. Jessica Lautz, the association’s deputy chief economist, said that “the historically low share of first-time buyers underscores the real-world consequences of a housing market starved for affordable inventory.”

How a 29-year-old buyer became a 40-year-old one

Three pressures stacked on top of one another over four decades. Prices climbed faster than wages, mortgage rates jumped, and the supply of homes that first-timers could realistically afford thinned out. On price alone, one industry analysis notes the median US home price rose about 24% between 2019 and 2025, well ahead of pay.

The supply squeeze has a mechanical cause. Millions of homeowners locked in cheap mortgages during the low-rate years and have no reason to trade them for today’s rates, now near 7%. The same analysis estimates that roughly 60% of existing mortgages carry rates below 5%, and that sellers now stay put for a record median of about 11 years before moving on. Fewer people moving means fewer homes changing hands, and the homes that do sell tend to go to buyers who already own one.

That last point is the engine. NAR’s survey puts repeat buyers at a median age of 62, and 30% of them paying all cash. A first-time buyer with a mortgage pre-approval and a modest deposit is competing against people writing cheques. Lautz put the dynamic plainly, telling NAR’s own magazine: “We’re seeing buyers with significant housing equity making larger down payments and all-cash offers, while first-time buyers continue to struggle to enter the market.”

A disputed number worth knowing

The age-40 figure deserves an asterisk, because not everyone who studies this agrees with it. NAR’s number comes from a single survey, a 120-question mail questionnaire that drew 6,103 responses at a 3.5% response rate, of whom only 1,281 were first-timers. Critics argue that kind of sample skews older.

Several large datasets built on actual loan records land in the low-to-mid thirties instead. The Mortgage Bankers Association, drawing on the FHFA’s National Mortgage Database, found the median first-time buyer age at 33 in 2024 and 32 in 2025. MBA economists Mike Fratantoni and Joel Kan argued that “our analysis of these data indicates that the typical FTHB today is likely not much older than one a decade ago,” and that most large-scale data sources “tell a different story” than NAR’s. 

The disagreement is real, and neither side has been proven right. What matters for the larger picture is that the contested number is the age, not the share. The 21% first-timer figure is not disputed in the same way, and it is the more telling of the two.

What a 21% share actually means

Before the 2008 crisis, first-timers made up roughly 40% of the market. Lautz noted the collapse in direct terms: the share of first-time buyers “in the market has contracted by 50% since 2007 – right before the Great Recession,” a figure drawn from the same survey and worth reading as NAR’s measure rather than settled market fact.

A shrinking first-timer share matters because homeownership is where much American household wealth is built, and the entry point is where the compounding starts. A Realtor.com analysis of Federal Reserve data puts the typical homeowner’s net worth near $430,000 against about $10,000 for the typical renter, a gap of roughly 43 to 1. When entry happens later, that compounding starts later too. NAR’s chief advocacy officer estimates that buying at 40 instead of 30 “can mean losing roughly $150,000 in equity on a typical starter home,” a projection rather than a measured loss, but a useful sense of scale.

The feedback loop is the uncomfortable part. Equity-rich repeat buyers use gains from their last home to outbid newcomers on the next, which pushes first-timers back another year, which concentrates housing wealth further among people who already hold it. Each cycle makes the next entry harder.

What could change it

The levers analysts watch are the same three pressures running in reverse. Mortgage rates falling far enough to unfreeze the lock-in effect would put more existing homes on the market. More building at the affordable end would ease the inventory shortage that NAR keeps pointing to. Neither is close at hand, and analysts across the competing datasets tend to agree that the share problem is structural rather than a passing rough patch.

Whichever age figure is closer to the truth, the market NAR describes has grown lopsided. Four in five buyers already own a home. One in five is trying to get in for the first time, and the deposit they need keeps moving with the prices they are chasing.

What matters isn’t when a single 40-year-old buyer finally closes on a house. It’s what a 21% share means for the cohort behind them — the people now in their late twenties who, a generation ago, would already have the keys.