The new NAR Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers 2024 is out! Release just before NAR NXT 2024 begins this week in Boston, it’s a study I look forward to unpacking every year.
Already, the press coverage has uncovered several of these key trends from this report:
Historic age spike in first-time buyers
First-time home buyers’ median age is now 38, the oldest recorded in the report’s history, compared to the late 20s in the 1980s. This shift reflects how affordability issues, higher interest rates, and home prices are reshaping home buying. The delay in buying has significant implications for agents and, in the longer term, will ultimately translate into changes in asset accumulation and generational wealth.
More all-cash buying than ever
We have a divided country in more than one way: at a time of acute housing affordability pain, we have a record number of homes being purchased without any financing. More than one in four of all home purchases in 2024 were all-cash transactions (26%). This trend is being driven by the generational wealth Boomers have achieved through homeownership, cashing in on the sale of their homes to buy another one for cash. Investors are also picking up lower-priced homes with all-cash offers, creating barriers for first-time buyers who rely on financing unless they figure out new ways to buy, like the cash offers program that zavvie makes available to first-time buyers through its network of lenders.
Multi-generational homes also hit a new high
Seventeen percent of buyers purchased multi-generational homes, the highest rate recorded – up from 12% in 2021. Why? Cost savings (36%) and caregiving for aging parents (25%). A new term to learn: collaborative homeownership. Housing affordability is very likely to add fuel to this fire.
Affordability emerges as a top priority
Neighborhood quality is a top factor for buyers, but affordability now is a priority for 36% of buyers. Convenience to work has dropped to 34%, down from 52% in 2014, as working from home remains a huge influence.
Record decline in households with children
Only 27% of buyers today have children under 18 at home. It’s the lowest rate since 1981, and our aging buyer demographic is the culprit. Agents will discover that this shift in family composition will likely impact demand for specific home types – and community amenities.
Yet the biggest story for me was this.
Single women first-time buyers on the rise as single men decline
The share of first-time buyers who are single women rose to 24% – that’s a 5% increase in one year. Conversely, single male home buyers dropped to 8% from 10% in 2023.
This significant increase in single female home buyers is a welcomed change. Let me explain.
I moved to Seattle in the 90s to become the Director of its new Seattle Partnership office. About a year into the job, a woman who appeared to be in her 50s walked into our office one early evening. I was the only one there. I asked her if I could help her.
She answered that she needed to be sure she was in the right place. She then retrieved an article from her purse. It was a Seattle Times story from the year before about the opening of our office. The story talked about creating new homeownership opportunities.
She told me a story. She said that about 20 years earlier, she was a teacher and wanted to buy her first home. While she was single, she had a steady job. So, she went to a local bank and met with a loan manager. She told him she wanted to buy a home and needed financing.
His reply, “Where’s your husband?” She explained that she was single and a schoolteacher. She told me he laughed out loud and told her, without taking ANY financial information, that she couldn’t possibly afford to buy a home on her own.
The experience devastated her so much that she said it took her 20 years to come into our office and ask for help. I immediately apologized for our industry, explaining that it should have never happened to her.
I also told her that while our Fannie Mae office did not provide home loans directly to consumers, we worked with lenders who did. I shared that I recently met with a woman who started an all-female staffed mortgage company, retrieved her card, provided her contact information, and assured her she would get the help she was seeking. They met, and she became a first-time buyer in her 50s.
Because of this meeting, seeing how more single women are investing in real estate today, despite affordability challenges, warms my heart and soul.
Keep the research coming, NAR – and see you in Boston.
Note: A summary of the new NAR report is available here.
