As if we needed more discouraging news about the housing market, here’s this: The median age of the first-time homebuyer rose to an all-time high of 38 years old in 2024, according to the National Association of Realtors.
Not only that but the percentage of first-time buyers among all homebuyers also fell to an historic low of 24%, the NAR data show. Both changes reflect just how expensive single-family homes have become and the older, later-in-life earning power now required to buy one.
In contrast, the median age of the first-time buyer in the 1980s was in their 20s.
In Thurston County, the median price of a home here last month was $507,000, up a little more than 1% from December 2023, according to new data released by the Northwest Multiple Listing Service. In King County it was $875,000 in December, the data show.
Recent median price growth has been tempered by higher mortgage interest rates, but a few years ago rates fell to around 3% and sparked demand. Combine that demand with low levels of inventory and median price rose sharply. Many homes have doubled in value over the past 10 years.
Community concerns
Windermere Olympia designated broker and owner Steve Garrett said he is concerned about the first-time buyer getting older because the concept of homeownership gets pushed further and further away.
And while people wait to afford a home, they rent.
Apartments have sprouted throughout Thurston County in recent years and more continue to be built. Garrett questions what we have become when we are a “town of apartment dwellers.”
“That’s hard,” he said, adding that he feels “it doesn’t lend itself to creating neighborhoods or a sense of community.”
South Puget Sound Community College Sociology Professor David Hyde offered this about first-time homebuyers getting older:
“As a generation they have less share of the national wealth than was once the case, so all kinds of financial things get delayed,” he said.
Garrett bought his first home in his early 20s, soon after graduating from what was then Saint Martin’s College in 1977. He paid $24,500 for a house near Lions Park in Olympia and borrowed money from his wife’s family and his family to make a down payment of about 10%, or a little more than $2,000.
A typical down payment today is 20 percent of the value of the home so the buyer can avoid having to pay private mortgage insurance. Given that the median price here is $500,000, the question for mom and dad these days is: Can I borrow $100,000?
Those in their 20s react
Students at SPSCC expressed dismay that homeownership seems so far out of reach.
“It’s incredibly disappointing that I will probably never be able to buy a home on my own,” said Hogan McCale, who turns 20 this month, although she is hopeful that she might be able to purchase a home communally by sharing the cost with family and friends.
“That’s always been a more realistic dream,” she said.
Mercedes Harris, 24, has bucked a trend by buying a home with her husband in Centralia, although to do it on her own would have been impossible, she said.
Ashante Godwin, 33, rejected the notion that a person is defined by home ownership, especially when it’s so expensive to buy or to rent.
“The world doesn’t give a person a reason to feel like they should be attached anywhere,” she said.
She said she’s encouraged by the idea of more people searching for a new path.
“You know, you don’t have to do what everybody’s doing,” she said. “Be the new start. You know, do something different. Put your foot down and change these rent prices.”
Addressing affordability
Washington state lawmakers, both Republicans and Democrats, agree that increasing the supply of homes is one way to right-size the supply/demand equation to provide lower prices. Similar thoughts were shared during a legislative preview with lawmakers that was hosted by McClatchy Thursday afternoon.
“Right now, we have a lot more people demanding a place to live than we have supply for them to live,” said House Minority Leader Drew Stokesbary, R-Auburn. “We have something like the fewest number of housing units per capita of any state in the country. And if we’re not dead last, we’re like in the bottom two or three.”
The best long-term solution is to build more supply, but that also means helping builders, he said.
“The last thing we need to do is, you know, just make it easier to build housing,” Stokesbary said. “We need it. We need to fix the permitting process. We need to fix the Growth Management Act. … Make it easier for a developer who might actually want to build housing here. Make it easier for their project to pencil out so that when they decide to start moving dirt around and building housing we can get more units online. That ought to be the biggest priority.”
The challenge, though, with increasing supply is that it takes time.
In the interim, prospective home buyers should take advantage of first-time home buyer programs, Windermere Olympia owner Garrett said.
“Get educated,” he said. “A local lender can help them through that process. There also are first-time home buyer classes they can take and down payment assistance programs.”