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The average age of U.S. homebuyers jumps to 56
- arcmechanica 2y agoUp from average of 40
- mikestew 2y agoFrom TFA, emphasis mine: “The average age of homebuyers is now 56, up from 49 in 2023…”
- intexpress 2y agoThe article says: “That’s a historic high, up from an average age in the low-to-mid 40s in the early 2010s.”
- pempem 2y agoSo depressing. So, so, so.
- trymas 2y agoDoes this mean that the average buyers are the same people for 15 years? Those who are 56 now, were 42 in 2010.
- ithkuil 2y agoIf that's true then it means the statistics include people that sell their home to buy a new one. Not sure what lesson we should draw from it but perhaps it's not just that young people don't buy homes anymore (if that's what you wanted to observe then find statistics that show the age of first home buyers)
- usrusr 2y agoSo it looks as if the cohort buying has stayed roughly the same over the years. The average buyer was born in 1970. Bad enough. But when we consider the bell curve, to compensate for the older tail getting decimated by age it must have gotten even worse for younger cohorts than what "the average rises by one year per year" suggests at first glance.
- runako 2y agoWithout taking away from the reality of housing costs, the long-term chart [1, chart is a year old but looking for trends] suggests other explanations. In particular, the average of first-time buyers was 35, up from 30 as recently as 2010. That's a bad trend. The overall average appears to be driven by people who have bought homes before. Anecdotally, the Boomers I know bought houses well into retirement where their parents typically made their last home purchase in their 30s. I am less concerned about housing turnover among older people. 1 - https://www.axios.com/2023/11/20/american-housing-market-older-homeowners-2023 https://www.axios.com/2023/11/20/american-housing-market-old...
- doctorpangloss 2y agoA lot of never-purchased-home-before people have money but still don't buy a home. Why? What happens that causes people who have money and can pay to finally buy a home?
- runako 2y agoA lot of reasons! Some I have heard: - Homeownership comes with responsibilities that people may not want - They prefer to invest the money elsewhere - They expect to relocate on timeframes shorter than those that make homeownership a good investment
- doctorpangloss 2y agoI'm asking, what causes people to buy a house for the first time? For upper middle class people the answer is probably having a baby, so you can see why if people are having babies later in life when their incomes are higher, prices rise.
- LVTfan 2y agobut the upper middle class is relatively small, depending on how you define upper middle class. Nationally, one might say the 15% who are below the 95th percentile (but locally is what matters for the purpose of buying property, and maybe "upper middle" is 60% to 95% of the local ranking).
- whatever1 2y agoThis is not a U.S only or even a western issue. UK, EU, China, India etc all suffer from crazy real estate prices. I think the whole world is due for a big societal revamp. The old generation has concentrated too much asset wealth for the productive generation to stay productive.
- gkanai 2y agoNot Japan, fwiw. Japan has been very reasonable for real estate for decades. We're now seeing inflation in major metro areas but outside of that, it's very reasonable.
- whatever1 2y agoJapan also suffers from severe population decline (I think it has been declining for 15 years straight). Aka the old guard let their assets go the hard way.
- dietr1ch 2y agoMaybe it's population decline instead of severe population increase beyond what society can sustain. It's like the infinite economical growth didn't account for finite resources.
- twelve40 2y agoAlways wondered what happens to housing in countries that rapidly depopulate. Like, Latvia losing 1/3 of its population, or Japan losing 4 million in 10 years. So they now have much fewer people for the same housing supply? Does it all just get abandoned?
- portaouflop 2y agoYes mostly the small villages get abandoned and life concentrated in the cities. So it does not help the housing problem all that much - sure there are now houses available in the countryside but no one wants to move there.
- surfpel 2y agoWell that’s what happens when you frame housing as an investment. If it didn’t outpace the market and the consumer inflation rate, it wouldn’t be a good investment. So by definition it must become unaffordable for the masses. No great way out of this mess.
- arthurcolle 2y agoMortality fixes generational issues
- iknowstuff 2y agoAre you aware of the vast disparity of wealth among American families? On the order of 100k for white families, 10k for black families. Wealth being passed down family trees ensures immigrants and people who are worse off now will remain priced out. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/black-wealth-is-increasing-but-so-is-the-racial-wealth-gap/ https://www.brookings.edu/articles/black-wealth-is-increasin...
- paulddraper 2y agoInheritance is tough. Death tax takes a good chunk.
- PaulRobinson 2y agoDo you know the actual rates, what value the estate must be at for it to kick in, and in which states? Are you aware of spousal transfers and other mechanisms to reduce or avoid it? Most people get very worried about “death tax”, until they do the numbers on their own estate and realise either it mostly doesn’t apply to them or it’s marginal. In the UK this is often used as a major campaign point but the number of estates actually subject to it is quite small.
- paulddraper 2y agoYes yes and yes. And spousal transfers are hardly generational (most of the time).
- nelsonfigueroa 2y agoI thought I would have a house in my 20s. Then I thought maybe by the time I was in my 30s. Now I’m in my 30s and I have no idea when I’ll buy a house, if ever.
- lnsru 2y agoDepends on how hard you want it. I spent more than a decade between the start of the search for proper property and buy decision. I even managed to sign my mortgage agreement in last weeks of cheap money in eurozone. It’s a long game unless you have a case full of cash.
- grigri907 2y agoTo a degree. But plenty of people want it real bad and there aren't enough days of avocado toast in a month that add up to a mortgage.
- mcmcmc 2y agoSaving a down payment in a single month would mean you have a pretty sizable income to start. I get what you’re saying, but if it’s a $10 avocado toast every day, then there are enough days in 3 years to save a $10k down payment for a starter home. One of the unintuitive consequences of low interest rates/ZIRP is that the savings rate is abysmal. When I was a kid I remember my first savings account earned maybe 2 or 3% interest annually. Now you’re lucky to get half a percent. People are disincentivized from saving money and instead end up putting savings into investments, which are inherently risky.
- jjav 2y ago> Now I’m in my 30s and I have no idea when I’ll buy a house, if ever. This might not be what you want to do, or hear; I know it wasn't what I wanted in my late 20s. But you could own a house within a year or so if you decide you want a house more than living in an expensive area. I spent my 20s banging my head against an impossibly expensive area trying to find something and perpetually failing (in my case, NYC). In my late 20s I gave up, moved to a very suburban (borderline rural) area and bought a house right away.
- DevX101 2y agoThis is a massive policy failure.
- switch007 2y agoThat's being too generous to politicians, assuming you're implying incompetence
- torginus 2y agoHonestly I thought the US is one of the easiest places in the developed world to become a homeowner (even if you have average income), provided you're willing to not live in one of the super expensive places. The US is relatively sparsely populated, while typical wooden homes take less labor and material to build.
- WillPostForFood 2y agoIt is. The "56" in the headline is skewed because of repeat buyers. Average age of first time buyers is 38, and that's skewed because of inflation/high interest rates of the last four years. It had been very steady around 30 for the last 50 years. Also, the 30 year fixed mortgage which is not as common abroad helps, but moreso when rates are low.
- AnimalMuppet 2y agoWell, the shift from 30 to 38 for first-time buyers is still a major change, isn't it?
- phyzix5761 2y agoI do financial coaching as a side business and I can tell you the main two reason why most people in their 30s can't afford a home is because they have no idea how to budget and they carry too much debt spent on things they don't need. On average people spend about 30% of their income paying off non mortgage debts like credit cards, car loans, and student loans. I teach my clients how to budget, cut back on unnecessary expenses, pay off their debts, and save up for their goals. On average, after 2 years they are debt free and can save up for a down payment on a home. Image how much quicker you could come up with a down payment if you could free up 30% of your income plus cut out all the unnecessary spending that's holding you back from achieving your goals.
- portaouflop 2y agoThis is what boomers actually believe in.
- phyzix5761 2y agoIt's gonna be 16 years in February that I've been a financial coach and I've helped literally hundreds of people at all income levels and backgrounds achieve their financial goals. What I said is the truth and my clients can attest to that.
- nickd2001 2y agoI believe you :) Simply refusing to play "keep up with the Joneses", seems to me can make the difference between being able to buy a home or not. Albeit it can take some inner confidence. I can't remember anyone actually asking me "why do you drive such a s*** car?", but they probably think it. ;) The key thing is not to care. Caveats - (1) this doesn't solve the problem if due to friends and family network you feel a need to live somewhere extortionate e:g London, NY, SF etc (although OTOH all of those have cheaper places 2 hr train ride away) (2) In USA, people can get randomly saddled with huge healthcare bills.
- phyzix5761 2y ago
- trhway 2y agoIf we look at the actual report https://www.nar.realtor/research-and-statistics/research-reports/highlights-from-the-profile-of-home-buyers-and-sellers https://www.nar.realtor/research-and-statistics/research-rep... the first-time homebuyers age moved up from the historically typical 33 to the current 38 only in the last 3 years which is not surprising given that the rates and thus mortgage payment jumped 2x times while all the other prices and thus expenses also jumped. I anything the graph tells that the repeat buyers' situation has been worsening over the last 4 decades - from 36 years age to 61 - while the first buyers' one hadn't changed that much - 29 in 1981 to 33 in 2021 - until the last 3 years. So it is more of the story of worsening situation of the middle class.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- tzs 2y agoCould some of this have to do with the post-WW2 rise in births peaking around 1959? That means we are now near a peak of people reaching retirement age, which often leads to them selling their current house and buying a house more suitable to retirement. That increase in people around 65 buying retirement houses could pull up the average homebuyer age.