40 and Finally Buying a Home. Why the Age of Ownership Keeps Creeping Up.

The share of all-cash buyers, at 26%, was tied with 2024, the highest on record for a trade group’s survey. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Key Points

• The median age for first time home buyers reached a new high of 40 in the year ended June 2025, up from 38 the prior year.
• First time buyers who use all cash fell to 21%, while all-cash buyers accounted for 26% of purchases.
• Repeat buyers made a median down payment of 23%, and first time buyers put down 10%, both highs since 2003 and 1989, respectively.

The median age for the first time home buyer is 40, a new high. For the housing industry, that’s not an achievement to celebrate.

Home sales have been ailing for several years as high prices and mortgage rates keep demand in check. As a result, buyers are purchasing later in life—and with bigger down payments.

In the year ended June 2025, the median first time buyer was 40, up from 38 the year prior, according to the National Association of Realtors’ 2025 profile of home buyers and sellers. That means buyers got their first set of keys at a time when those in 1997 were already trading up.

But 40 feels different than 38, which was also a record median age in 2024, says Jessica Lautz, the trade group’s deputy chief economist and vice president of research. “It feels like something has shifted in the housing market,” she says. “I don’t know if we can move backward [in age] unless we have a substantial change, like more affordable housing inventory.”

It isn’t the only data point that chronicles the stuck housing market: The share of all-cash buyers, at 26%, was tied with 2024 for the trade group’s highest on record, while the share of first time buyers, at 21%, fell to its lowest.

“Seeing that the share of first time home buyers is essentially cut in half from what the historical norm was really speaks to the difficulty of today’s housing market, the lack of movement in the housing market, and the substantial growth that we would need to have in inventory to fix the problem,” she says.

Those who financed their purchase used hefty down payments to do so. Repeat buyers put a median 23% down on their purchase, the highest since 2003. First time buyers put down 10%, the most since 1989, the trade group said.

Sellers’ tenure in their homes increased to 11 years, from a decade one year prior. “People just want to stay put,” says Lautz, noting that fewer move-up buyers means it’s harder for first timers to get in the door.

The data covers respondents who bought a house between July 2024 and June 2025. The time that has passed since then has brought some good news and bad news.

On the bright side, mortgage rates have moved significantly lower than the 6.69% they averaged during the survey’s period. Fixed 30-year rates measured by Freddie Mac last week declined to a 6.17% average, meaning those with a $400,000 loan at last week’s rate stand to save more than $100 a month compared with the survey’s average.

But the decline likely isn’t enough to improve demand on its own. “We’ve seen mortgage interest rates come down ever so slightly; we’ve seen slightly more housing inventory coming into the market—but I think we’ll need to make big strides in both of those directions to see improvement in this data,” says Lautz.

Write to Shaina Mishkin at shaina.mishkin@dowjones.com