This is my two cents, and the information arrived after some interesting texts with my little brother, Crusader.
Some of it, now that last night’s results are in, needs to be attended to immediately, as he said.
Trump really needs to focus on what can be done for the economy… He needs to light a fire under congresscritters to ratchet down on outsourcing and h1bs; the job market is not getting better and grocery prices aren’t getting better either
Some grocery prices are better, sure – those damn eggs, for one thing. But the hamburger you feed a family with is still through the roof, and that’s the kind of thing people feel. Not that it’s gone up, as it did constantly with the much reviled #Bidenomics. But the prices haven’t gone down appreciably. Folks find that irksome, and Trump will catch that blame even though he had little to do with it.
And the anger that younger generations are feeling about being stuck in place is a tangible thing, which translates into the appeal of figures like Ocasio-Cortez and the once-amiable Mamdani. Sure, their mountains of student debt were stupidly obtained for worthless degrees from universities with no skin in the game, and their fantasy expectations of enormous salaries for entry-level positions were pipe dreams of the first order, as most had never had any contact with real life to begin with.
But it still breeds contempt for everyone who has attained those American dreams through hard work, saving, sacrifice, and sometimes a bit of luck. Particularly when that one thing – home ownership – seems so far out of reach as to never be attainable, no matter what one does.
And that dream has just hit a new level of out there.
BREAKING: The median age of a first-time homebuyer in the US has surged to a record 40 years old.
This is up from a median age of 33 years old in 2021 and 29 in 1981.
Over the last year, first-time buyers made up just 21% of purchases, the lowest on record.
Meanwhile, the… pic.twitter.com/wGInsbm22R
— The Kobeissi Letter (@KobeissiLetter) November 5, 2025
…Over the last year, first-time buyers made up just 21% of purchases, the lowest on record.
Meanwhile, the typical age of repeat buyers hit an all-time high of 62, with their median down payments reaching 23%, the highest since 2003.
Record home prices and high mortgage rates have created the worst buying conditions on record, locking younger Americans out of homeownership.
The US housing affordability crisis is worsening.
Wowsahs.
Home buyers are getting older and older. An ‘all-time high’ of cash buyers and an ‘all-time low’ of folks getting that first set of keys.
…The median buyer age increased to a peak of 59 years, up from 56 the previous year. The median age of first-time buyers increased to 40 this year from 38 the previous year, while the typical age of repeat buyers also rose to 62 from 61. First-time homebuyers decreased to 21% of the market share, down from 24% last year. That marks the lowest share since NAR began collecting the data in 1981. Before the Great Recession, the historical norm was 40%. The report noted the division in the housing market.
“In the 1980s, the typical first-time home buyer was in their late 20s,” according to NAR’s 2025 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers. “The housing market remains divided between an all-time high of all-cash home buyers and an all-time low of first-time buyers.”
Jessica Lautz, NAR deputy chief economist and vice president of research, said the implications are “staggering.”
“The historically low share of first-time buyers underscores the real-world consequences of a housing market starved for affordable inventory,” she said.
“The share of first-time buyers in the market has contracted by 50% since 2007 – right before the Great Recession. The implications for the housing market are staggering. Today’s first-time buyers are building less housing wealth and will likely have fewer moves over a lifetime as a result.”
Twenty-four percent of all buyers had children under the age of 18 living at home, a historically low percentage. That’s down from 27% last year and from 58% in 1985. This year, 11% of home buyers had one child, 9% had two children, and 5% had three or more children. Thirty-two percent of first-time buyers and 22% of repeat buyers had children under the age of 18.
Seventy-six percent of all buyers had no children under the age of 18 living at home, up from 73% last year.
There are more home buyers over the age of 70 in the U.S. than under the age of 35, per NAR
— unusual_whales (@unusual_whales) September 10, 2025
There are no ‘starter’ homes anymore, and what’s available isn’t affordable until someone is in their forties.
Median age of homebuyers is 56 today.
It was 31 in 1981 pic.twitter.com/8fIgjzuL2N
— Mike Zaccardi, CFA, CMT 🍖 (@MikeZaccardi) May 18, 2025
One fellow calls what’s happening right now a ‘full-on housing freeze,’ and I can see the points he’s making. The average 30-year fixed rate dropped to 6.17% this week. But you have to have good credit and a whopping down payment saved up to put down 20% on a $400K house ( . That’s, like, eighty grand down, with a $24-2600 a month payment before taxes, etc. added in.
There don’t seem to be many $159,000 fixer-upper boxes anymore.
How we break out of it, I have no idea. I’m not an economist and don’t even attempt to play one here at HotAir. I’ve always been lousy at math.
But I do know we lucked into one of those low rates, just like he’s talking about, and are part of the freeze. There’s no way we’re moving and paying out the wazoo, even though I’d dearly like more room.
The Great Housing Standoff
This is a full on housing freeze. Nobody wants to sell because they’re locked into 3–4% mortgages they’ll never see again, and nobody wants to buy because prices are still sky high on top of 6% rates. It’s not a lack of demand or supply in the usual… pic.twitter.com/MTl5YXPv5K
— EndGame Macro (@onechancefreedm) November 2, 2025
…Nobody wants to sell because they’re locked into 3–4% mortgages they’ll never see again, and nobody wants to buy because prices are still sky high on top of 6% rates. It’s not a lack of demand or supply in the usual sense, it’s paralysis. Everyone’s waiting for someone else to move first, but nobody can afford to.
What’s made it worse is that the mechanics of the market are broken. Mortgage spreads are still wide, so even when bond yields ease, mortgage rates barely fall. That means affordability doesn’t really improve, and the few who could move decide it’s not worth the risk. The real fear is buying right before prices finally crack. People know this is the most unaffordable market in modern history, and the danger is getting stuck underwater on your home, unable to refinance when rates drop. So the market sits in a kind of quiet standoff, everyone knows something has to give, but nobody wants to be the first to find out what.
In the meantime, everyone sits, stews, stares, and gets angry, frustrated, and dejected, feeling they’ll never have those keys, no matter how hard they work at it.
And they begin to feel like that shiny face telling them there’s a better way has the answer.
I do remember those days when the credit union car loan we got at 11% was considered a bargain, and a mortgage, had we gotten one, would have been close to double digits.
But this is a different world right now, and while these rates are historically still low, the housing prices are insane. Back then, folks were pleased to come away with a nice little appreciation of their property when they sold it, not the wholesale doubling or tripling in value we’ve seen around here, which is now expected.
‘I only made fifty grand on it.’ After three years.
Inconceivable in times past.
As I said, I don’t know. I do hope there’s a pivot to economics soon. Not tariffs – kitchen table issues.
Letting Americans see what’s going on with household budgets needs to be just as important to the Trump team as, say, Venezuela or the Nobel Peace Prize.
Cuz, really – there’s no place like home.
Your own home.
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