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February 2025 Newsletter - Surprising Stats!
Dated: February 21 2025
Views: 155
I saw some real estate statistics the other day, and I found them interesting enough that I wanted to share them with you. Now, I know what you’re thinking - “YES PLEASE! Nothing gets me more excited than statistics, especially ones about the real estate market.” I know, but stay calm, we’ll get there soon enough. Slide forward to the edge of your seat, and we’ll check them out together.
The first stat is that slightly more than four million homes were sold in 2024 in the US. Any number in the millions certainly sounds really big, but in actuality, those four million transactions were the fewest since 1995 - almost thirty years ago! In 1995, I had just gotten my driver’s license and owned a pretty sweet Oldsmobile Delta 88. In 1995, I only had one friend who had the internet, and we would go to his house to watch a picture load, pixel by pixel, and then look at sports scores on espn.com. In 1995, Coolio had his first and only hit song. Suffice it to say, it was quite a while ago. It was long enough ago that there were seventy million less people living in the United States than today. Why did so few homes sell in 2024?
Great question, and it leads us to statistic number two. What would you guess is the average age of a first-time home buyer? I would have said maybe around thirty years old, and that would have been a fairly accurate guess from 1980 to 2020, as that data point drifted from 29 to 31 over those forty years. But in only the last few years, it has made a massive leap, going to 33, then 35, and up to 38 last year! What an enormous demographic change in just a few years’ time.
I think there are a wide variety of explanations for why people are waiting longer to buy their first home, including higher interest rates, expensive housing prices, and economic uncertainty. But let’s add a couple more figures to the mix to clarify the picture. Ten years ago, empty nesters owned roughly the same number of large houses (three or more bedrooms) as families with young children. Today, empty nesters own twice as many of the large homes as those families do. I think we can partially interpret that as the boomer generation staying in their big family-sized homes longer than previous generations did.
Here are my takeaways from this information. First, this feels like the opposite of being on the precipice of a housing crash. If you want a refresher of what the market was like before the Great Recession, rewatch The Big Short with Steve Carell. People who had no business owning houses were buying them in bunches. Today, there are a multitude of buyers out there waiting for the right conditions to buy their first home. Next, if you’re not currently a homeowner and you’re waiting for the market to get better before you buy, it seems like you’re in for a long wait. I have a hunch that if interest rates come down, there is going to be an absolute flood of new buyers into the market, which could push prices even higher. And finally, for my readers who are still in your large homes after the kids have moved out, maybe it’s time to explore your options in a different style of housing. I’m not trying to push you out of the home you’ve loved for a long time, but it might be worth checking out what other kinds of properties exist. There are some fantastic options out there that might really match your lifestyle in the next phase of your life.
Regardless of where you’re at in your lifelong real estate journey, I look forward to being your guide along the way!
Clint Kuipers
Clint Kuipers specializes in complex and emotionally significant real estate transitions in the Twin Cities, including divorce, estate sales, downsizing, and buying and selling at the same time. With ....
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