After only a few months, Chris Swanson is sick of shopping for houses in what the 39-year-old calls a “dumpster fire” of a market for first-time buyers like himself.
“Boomers are absolutely in the driver’s seat,” said Jessica Lautz, deputy chief economist at NAR, because they have built up home equity and can pay in cash. “Unfortunately, that has pushed many millennials to the sidelines.”Since entering the workforce, they’ve experienced the slowest economic growth of any age group. They’ve also been weighed down by student debt and child-care costs, Lautz said.
As a result, first-time home buyers are older, with a median age of 36, Lautz said. That’s the oldest since NAR started keeping track in 1981, when it was 29. As the age climbed, she noted, the share of first-time home buyers sank to “historic lows.”“a real burden on young people who don’t have the high salaries of old folks like me,” said Joe Gyourko, 67, a professor of real estate at the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School.