Why Some Americans Are Waiting Until After Retirement to Buy Their First Homes

First-time homebuyers in America are older than ever before, especially as competing buyers with all-cash offers make it difficult for older, low-income renters to save up enough money to buy a home. The typical buyer searching for a starter home in 2022 was 36 years old—an all-time high—but in many cases, first-timers are much older.

Roughly 20% of buyers between the ages of 50 and 59 were purchasing for the first time in 2022, while 11% of buyers aged 60 to 69 were first-time homeowners, and 7% of first-time buyers were over the age of 70, The New York Times reports.

For many of those buyers, the desire to lock in costs as they transition to a fixed income is reason enough to finally shift from renting to owning, said Jeff Zucker, a senior economist at Zillow. “As they’re considering how their pension, social security and income will be fairly fixed moving forward, the beauty of the 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage is that you don’t have to worry that rising rents could force you out,” Mr. Zucker said.

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