Last year, we were told that the first-time home buyer age surged to a record high 40 years old!
The bad news was delivered by the National Association of Realtors (NAR) and had housing bears and doomers jumping up and down in delight.
But it turns out it’s probably not even true, as many other perhaps more reliable data sources contradict the findings.
After all, NAR gathered their data via a snail mail survey to come up with the numbers.
How many young people are responding to and completing mail survey these days?
NAR Claims the First-Time Home Buyer Age Hit a Record High 40 Years Old in 2025
According to NAR, the first-time home buyer age increased to a not-so-young 40 years old in 2025.
Aside from being the highest age ever recorded, it was also up from 38 in 2024, 35 in 2023, and 33 in 2021.
So somehow it leaped seven years in just a few years, after remaining close to 30 since 1981.
Yes, we had a mortgage rate shock in late 2022 that persisted for the past few years, along with sky-high home prices.
But even then, it seems kind of far-fetched. And perhaps it is. After all, the data is based on a literal mail survey.
In other words, you get something in the mail and you take the time to respond to it and send it back.
How many young people are doing that? Apparently more back in the day. But today, probably not many.
In fact, only about 6,100 home buyers reportedly responded.
Sheer logic would tell us that the older FTHBs would be more willing to fill out surveys and buy postage stamps and lick envelopes.
Actual young people? Not likely.
Now you could argue that it’s all relative, and if they’ve been using the same methodology, it’s higher compared to prior years, with the same data collection.
Countering that is recent home sales volume has been the lowest in 30 years so sample size might be a question mark. And the FTHB share bottomed in 2024 as well.
Regardless, we have actual data from a lot of other sources that points to much less movement in median first-time home buyer age.
[What Is a Good Price for a First-Time Home Buyer?]
Wait, the First-Time Home Buyer Age Actually Dropped Last Year?
While NAR is doing a little bit of maybe unintentional dooming, a bunch of other data outlets are saying it’s business as usual.
For example, the FHFA’s National Mortgage Database (NMDB), based on millions of actual closed mortgage loans, indicated a much smaller increase.
Per the MBA, which compiled the data, the median age increased much less from 30 to 33 years of age through 2024, then actually fell to 32 in 2025.
Yes, it moved higher, which again makes sense given how poor housing affordability became when mortgage rates nearly tripled.
But then it retreated, as you’d expect, once rates improved last year. And if that’s any indication, it should improve again this year and fall back into a pretty normal range.
If that’s not enough for you, the MBA also considered FTHB data from Cotality (based on millions of home loan applications), which showed the median FTHB age essentially flat at 32.
Then there were the estimates cited in a Washington Post article provided by analysts using American Housing Survey data from the U.S. Census Bureau.
Again, those revealed a flat median age of 33 years old in 2023, the most recent data available.
Similarly, an analysis from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (FRBNY), which relied upon data from the Consumer Credit Panel/Equifax, found the median age of FTHBs to be 32, 33, and 33 in 2016, 2019, and 2024, respectively.
In other words, pretty darn flat. And because affordability is finally beginning to improve, thanks to both lower mortgage rates and flat/lower home prices, this metric should normalize as well.
Read on: 2025 Mortgage Rate Predictions From All the Big Names
Before creating this site, I worked as an account executive for a wholesale mortgage lender in Los Angeles. My hands-on experience in the early 2000s inspired me to begin writing about mortgages 19 years ago to help prospective (and existing) home buyers better navigate the home loan process. Follow me on X for hot takes.