Average Age Of A First-Time Home Buyer In The United States For 2026

Q: How old is the average home buyer in the United States?

The median age of all home buyers is 59, according to the Realtors' most recent annual profile, and repeat buyers alone have a median age of 62. That number covers everyone, not first-timers. Mortgage records put the average age of a home-purchase borrower at 41.

Q: What is the average age of a first-time home buyer by state?

No agency publishes a first-time buyer age for each state. Federal mortgage data does publish the average age of everyone taking out a home-purchase loan in each state, and it runs from 38 in North Dakota to 46 in Delaware. The table above carries all 51 figures next to each state's young-ownership rate.

Q: Is Minnesota the best state for young homeowners?

Minnesota ranks fourth today, not first. Its under-35 homeownership rate is 45.3%, behind West Virginia at 49.5%, Michigan at 46.1% and Wyoming at 45.7%. Minnesota did lead the country in 2000, 2010 and 2015, so the map that still crowns it is not so much wrong as a decade out of date.

Q: Which age group owns the most homes?

Homeownership climbs steadily with age. Only 37.1% of households headed by someone under 35 own, against 60.8% for 35 to 44, 69.8% for 45 to 54, 75.9% for 55 to 64 and 78.6% for households headed by someone 65 or older. The under-35 rate peaked at 43.1% in 2004 and hit its record low of 34.5% in 2016.

Q: Are young people buying fewer homes than their parents did?

Yes, measured by age 30. Fifty-five percent of the Silent Generation owned a home by 30, against 48% of baby boomers, 42% of Generation X and 33% of millennials. Each generation has reached homeownership more slowly than the one before it, so this did not start with millennials.

Q: Is it harder to buy a first home now?

By price of entry, yes. The median first-time down payment is 10%, the highest since 1989, and about one in five recent young buyers needed a family cash gift to reach it. The age at which people manage it has stayed roughly flat, which means the barrier is money and credit rather than timing.

Ask the internet how old a first-time buyer is and you will get 40, an all-time high from the National Association of Realtors^[1]. Ask the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which reads credit records instead of survey answers, and the average age of a first-time home buyer is 36.3, younger than the 37.9 it measured in 2000^[4].

Datasets built from mortgage and credit records put the typical first-time buyer in their low-to-mid thirties, and they agree the number has barely moved in a decade.
The famous 40 comes from a mail survey of 6,103 people who bought a home with an agent.
Roughly two in five under-35 households own their home, and that share is higher now than at its low point ten years ago.
West Virginia has the highest young-ownership rate in the country. Washington DC has the lowest, by a lot.
Buying a first home did get harder. First-time down payments are the biggest since 1989, and about one in five young buyers needed a cash gift from family.

Here is what each source actually measures, and where young Americans still manage to buy.

What is the average age of a first-time home buyer?

The average age of a first-time home buyer in the United States is between 33 and 40, depending on which dataset counts them. The Realtors’ annual survey reports a median of 40^[1]. The New York Fed’s credit panel reports a median of 33 and an average of 36.3^[4]. Redfin, reading Census survey data on people who recently moved, reports a median of 35^[5].

None of those is wrong. They are three different questions wearing one headline.

How old is a first-time buyer? Four answers, four different groups of people

NAR survey40median, mail survey of 6,103 agent-assisted buyers, 2025
Redfin35median, Census CPS ASEC movers, 2025
NY Fed, average36.3Consumer Credit Panel, all first mortgages, 2024
NY Fed, median33Consumer Credit Panel, all first mortgages, 2024

Survey of buyersCredit and mortgage records

Sources: National Association of Realtors; Redfin; Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Bars start at age 30.

Why do the estimates range from 33 to 40?

Because each one counts a different group of people. The Realtors mail a questionnaire to people who closed a sale, and 88% of the buyers in that sample used an agent^[2]. The same survey read 38 a year earlier^[3]. The credit-record datasets see every borrower who takes out a mortgage, agent or no agent, and they treat a first-time buyer as somebody with no prior mortgage on file^[6].

The Mortgage Bankers Association looked at the same question and said it plainly. Most large-scale data sources tell a different story, its economists wrote, and the typical first-time buyer today is likely not much older than one a decade ago^[11].

Same question, three universes

The Realtors’ survey
40
Mailed to people who closed a sale. 6,103 answered. 88% of them used an agent. First-time means the buyer said so.
Census survey data
35
Redfin reads the Current Population Survey and counts people who recently moved. First-time is inferred from why they moved.
Credit and mortgage records
33
The New York Fed reads credit files for every borrower. First-time means no prior mortgage on record, so a past cash buyer counts.

Median age of a first-time buyer under each method. Sources: NAR; Redfin; Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Have first-time home buyers gotten older over time?

Barely, and not the way the headlines suggest. The New York Fed has tracked the same measure since 2000. The average first-time buyer was 37.9 that year, 35.4 in 2016, 36.4 in 2019 and 36.3 in 2024^[4]. The oldest reading in the series is the first one.

Mortgage records say the same thing from another angle. The average person taking out a loan to buy a home went from 39 in 1998 to 42 around 2017, and sits at 41 now^[6]. Under-35 borrowers took 38.8% of purchase mortgages in 1998 and 37.8% in the most recent year^[6]. Twenty-seven years. One percentage point.

Twenty-seven years of home-purchase mortgages, and almost nothing moved

Average age of the borrower, in years

Share of purchase loans going to borrowers under 35

Two measures, two scales. The 2009 spike in the lower panel is the first-time homebuyer tax credit. Source: Federal Housing Finance Agency, National Mortgage Database, home-purchase originations.

Why do people say buyers are getting older?

Because the forces everyone points to are real. The Realtors’ own buyers name high rent and student loans as the two costs that keep them from saving^[2]. Housing researchers add the slower version of the same story. People stay in school longer, marry later, have children later, and buy later as a result. That pattern runs across the developed world and it has been running for decades.

It is also older than millennials. Measured by age 30, 55% of the Silent Generation owned a home, against 48% of baby boomers, 42% of Generation X and 33% of millennials^[10]. Three generations in a row bought later than the one before.

So the explanation is sound. The size of it is the part that gets oversold. Later marriage and heavier student debt moved the typical buying age by a year or two across a quarter century, not by eleven years in one decade.

How many young Americans own their home?

About 37 of every 100 households headed by someone under 35^[7]. That Census series runs back to 1982, and its shape is a round trip rather than a slide. The rate was 41.2% in 1982, peaked at 43.1% during the subprime boom in 2004, bottomed at 34.5% in 2016, and has climbed back to 37.1%^[7].

So young ownership fell hard, then recovered most of the way. The New York Fed and the Texas Real Estate Research Center both got there before we did, working from the same public series^[4]^[11]. It is also the number to watch alongside how long people stay put once they buy.

The under-35 homeownership rate went down and most of the way back up

Share of households headed by someone under 35 that own their home, annual. Source: Census Bureau, Housing Vacancies and Homeownership, table 19.

Which states have the most young homeowners?

West Virginia, where 49.5% of under-35 households own their home^[8]. Wyoming is close enough to call it a tie. Michigan follows at 46.1%, then Minnesota at 45.3%. Nearly half the young households in West Virginia own the roof over their heads.

The bottom of the list is not close. Washington DC sits at 13.7%, far below anywhere else^[8]. California is the lowest state at 23.7%, statistically tied with Hawaii at 25.2%, and New York is next at 26.8%. Thirty-one states clear the national ownership rate by more than their margin of error, and twelve fall short of it by more than theirs.

One more thing about that map you have seen. The version going around crowns Minnesota at 50.8%, and it comes from a property-management company’s composite score rather than a public dataset. In Census figures no state reaches a majority.

Rank Share who own

Map: the share of households headed by someone under 35 that own their home, by state, ranked. Darkest is the highest rate (West Virginia, 49.5%); lightest is the lowest (District of Columbia, 13.7%). Source: Census Bureau, American Community Survey table B25007.

The same data shaded by the rate itself, from 49.5% in West Virginia down to 13.7% in the District of Columbia.

Source: Census Bureau, American Community Survey one-year estimates, table B25007.

1 West Virginia
2 Michigan
3 Wyoming
4 Minnesota
5 Maine
6 Iowa
7 Indiana
8 Alabama
9 Delaware
10 Vermont

Young homeownership in every state

The table carries both measures side by side. The ownership columns are Census; the buyer columns are federal mortgage records. Sort any column by clicking its header.

Every state by the share of under-35 households that own their home, with the margin of error, the same share in 2000, the change since, the average age of a home-purchase borrower and the share of purchase mortgages going to borrowers under 35. Click a header to sort.
Rank	State	Own %	+/-	2000 %	Change	Buyer age	Buyers <35 %
1	West Virginia	49.5	2.1	50.5	-1.0	39	46.7
2	Michigan	46.1	0.7	49.3	-3.2	40	43.1
3	Wyoming	45.7	3.5	40.9	+4.7	42	39.7
4	Minnesota	45.3	0.7	50.6	-5.3	39	44.2
5	Maine	45.0	1.8	45.2	-0.3	42	34.3
6	Iowa	44.9	1.3	45.7	-0.8	39	49.6
7	Indiana	43.6	1.0	46.8	-3.1	39	46.2
8	Alabama	43.6	1.4	49.1	-5.5	41	40.4
9	Delaware	43.2	3.2	45.8	-2.5	46	26.9
10	Vermont	42.4	3.0	40.7	+1.7	41	40.7
11	New Hampshire	42.1	2.4	42.0	+0.0	42	35.8
12	South Dakota	41.9	2.0	42.2	-0.3	40	44.2
13	Louisiana	41.5	1.2	42.9	-1.4	39	44.1
14	Arkansas	41.4	1.6	43.8	-2.3	40	41.5
15	Missouri	41.4	1.0	44.1	-2.7	41	40.9
16	South Carolina	41.4	1.3	47.7	-6.3	43	34.4
17	Utah	41.3	1.1	45.5	-4.2	39	44.3
18	Ohio	41.2	0.8	42.0	-0.8	40	44.0
19	Kentucky	41.1	1.3	47.2	-6.1	39	46.2
20	Idaho	40.6	1.8	46.0	-5.4	42	37.2
21	Mississippi	40.1	1.9	49.0	-8.9	41	40.9
22	Pennsylvania	40.0	0.7	43.9	-3.9	40	42.4
23	New Mexico	39.6	2.4	43.4	-3.8	41	40.5
24	Kansas	38.8	1.3	40.6	-1.8	40	43.2
25	Maryland	38.6	1.1	40.8	-2.2	41	35.0
26	Wisconsin	37.9	0.8	39.9	-2.0	40	44.5
27	Oklahoma	37.9	1.2	39.9	-1.9	40	43.5
28	Illinois	37.5	0.8	40.7	-3.2	40	41.2
29	Connecticut	37.1	1.5	38.0	-0.9	41	38.2
30	Tennessee	36.6	1.2	44.6	-7.9	41	38.7
31	Nebraska	36.5	1.6	37.9	-1.4	40	42.6
32	North Carolina	36.5	0.9	43.8	-7.3	42	36.8
33	Georgia	36.1	1.1	42.7	-6.6	41	36.4
34	Virginia	36.0	1.1	39.3	-3.4	42	35.9
35	Alaska	35.9	2.7	35.6	+0.4	41	38.4
36	Arizona	35.5	1.1	40.0	-4.5	44	32.4
37	Florida	35.4	0.7	40.0	-4.7	44	28.1
38	Rhode Island	34.0	3.7	32.3	+1.8	40	41.9
39	New Jersey	33.7	0.8	38.3	-4.6	41	35.1
40	Colorado	33.6	1.1	40.5	-6.9	41	38.1
41	Montana	33.5	2.2	38.4	-4.9	43	33.5
42	North Dakota	32.5	2.1	36.2	-3.8	38	49.5
43	Texas	31.5	0.5	35.3	-3.9	40	38.4
44	Nevada	31.4	1.7	37.9	-6.5	44	27.5
45	Massachusetts	31.1	1.0	32.3	-1.2	41	37.9
46	Washington	31.0	0.9	34.5	-3.5	41	38.2
47	Oregon	30.5	1.3	32.8	-2.3	43	32.1
48	New York	26.8	0.6	27.2	-0.5	41	36.6
49	Hawaii	25.2	2.5	23.5	+1.7	45	22.6
50	California	23.7	0.4	27.3	-3.6	42	31.6
51	District of Columbia	13.7	1.9	17.3	-3.6	40	38.3

Ownership: Census Bureau, ACS table B25007 and Census 2000 SF3 table H014. Buyer age and buyer share: Federal Housing Finance Agency, National Mortgage Database.

How the map has changed since 2000

Watch the country repaint. In 2000, 13 states had at least 45% of their young households owning. By 2015 not one did. Four do now.

Minnesota led in 2000, 2010 and 2015. Wyoming took the lead in 2019, West Virginia has it now, and the District of Columbia has been last in every single frame.

20002010201520192024

2000: Minnesota leads at 50.6%, the national rate is 38.96%, 13 states are at 45% or better and 4 are under 30%.

2010: Minnesota leads at 48.0%, the national rate is 35.52%, 3 states are at 45% or better and 6 are under 30%.

2015: Minnesota leads at 44.2%, the national rate is 32.07%, 0 states are at 45% or better and 12 are under 30%.

2019: Wyoming leads at 46.9%, the national rate is 34.05%, 2 states are at 45% or better and 4 are under 30%.

2024: West Virginia leads at 49.5%, the national rate is 35.41%, 4 states are at 45% or better and 4 are under 30%.

The under-35 homeownership rate in every era of the map above, so each frame is readable as text.
Year	National	Highest state	Lowest	States at 45%+	Under 30%
2000	38.96%	Minnesota, 50.6%	District of Columbia, 17.29%	13	4
2010	35.52%	Minnesota, 48.0%	District of Columbia, 18.95%	3	6
2015	32.07%	Minnesota, 44.2%	District of Columbia, 18.30%	0	12
2019	34.05%	Wyoming, 46.9%	District of Columbia, 19.14%	2	4
2024	35.41%	West Virginia, 49.5%	District of Columbia, 13.72%	4	4

Where has young homeownership fallen the most?

Not where you would guess. Forty-five of the 50 states and Washington DC sit below their 2000 rate, and 36 of those declines are big enough to be sure of^[8]^[9]. The steepest are Mississippi, down 8.9 points, then Tennessee at 7.9, North Carolina at 7.3, Colorado at 6.9, Georgia at 6.6 and Nevada at 6.5.

Look at that list again. Those are the places people moved to because housing was cheap. California fell 3.6 points over the same stretch and New York fell half a point, because both were already low. Since 2010 the picture is genuinely mixed: 14 states down, 14 up, and 23 too close to call.

Change in the under-35 homeownership rate since 2000, in percentage points

MS-8.9
TN-7.9
NC-7.3
CO-6.9
GA-6.6
NV-6.5
SC-6.3
KY-6.1
AL-5.5
ID-5.4
MN-5.3
MT-4.9
FL-4.7
NJ-4.6
AZ-4.5
UT-4.2
PA-3.9
TX-3.9
ND-3.8
NM-3.8
CA-3.6
DC-3.6
WA-3.5
VA-3.4
MI-3.2
IL-3.2
IN-3.1
MO-2.7
DE
AR-2.3
OR-2.3
MD-2.2
WI-2.0
OK-1.9
KS-1.8
LA-1.4
NE
MA-1.2
WV
CT
OH
IA
NY
SD
ME
NH
AK
VT
HI
RI
WY+4.7

Bars run left for a fall and right for a rise. Only changes larger than the margin of error carry a number; the rest are too close to call. Sources: Census Bureau, ACS table B25007 and Census 2000 SF3 table H014.

Which states have the youngest home buyers?

This is a different map, and that surprised us. North Dakota has the youngest average home-purchase borrower in the country at 38, and half of every purchase mortgage written in Iowa goes to somebody under 35^[6]. Yet North Dakota ranks 42nd in the share of young households that own.

Delaware is the mirror image. It has the oldest average buyer in America at 46, up seven years since 1998, and only 26.9% of its purchase mortgages go to under-35 borrowers^[6]. It still ranks ninth for young ownership. One map shows who lives in a home they own. The other shows who is signing this year.

Buying young and owning young are two different maps

Buys young, owns low
North Dakota
- 38 average buyer age
- 49.5% of purchase loans go to under-35s
- #42 of 51 for young ownership
Young buyers everywhere, and still one of the lowest young-ownership rates in the country.
Owns high, buys oldest
Delaware
- 46 average buyer age
- 26.9% of purchase loans go to under-35s
- #9 of 51 for young ownership
The oldest buyers in America, up seven years since 1998, in a state that ranks ninth for young ownership.

Sources: Census Bureau, ACS table B25007; Federal Housing Finance Agency, National Mortgage Database.

If age did not change, what did?

The price of entry. First-time buyers now put down a median of 10%, the biggest first-time down payment since 1989^[1]. About one in five recent millennial buyers got a cash gift from family, roughly one in five sold stock, and 13% pulled money out of a retirement account early^[5].

Credit got stricter too. The average credit score for a first-time borrower climbed from 714 in 2016 to 734^[4]. Fewer people clear the bar. The ones who do are not much older than they used to be, just better funded, and that is a different problem than the one the headlines describe.

What actually changed on the way in

10%median first-time down payment, the largest since 1989
19.6%of recent millennial buyers got a family cash gift
13%pulled money out of a retirement account early
734average credit score of a first-time borrower, up from 714

Sources: National Association of Realtors; Redfin; Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Methodology

This article measures two separate things and keeps them apart.

Ownership rates come from the Census Bureau. State figures use table B25007, tenure by age of householder, from the American Community Survey one-year estimates, with the 2000 comparison drawn from the decennial long-form sample^[8]^[9]. The national series back to 1982 comes from the Housing Vacancies and Homeownership survey^[7]. Those two Census products use different samples and land on slightly different levels for the same year, so every number is reported with its source and the two are never combined into one series.

Buyer figures come from the National Mortgage Database, run by the Federal Housing Finance Agency and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau^[6]. Its state series is the average age of everyone taking out a home-purchase mortgage, first-time and repeat together, so it is never labeled a first-time-buyer age. Cash buyers do not appear in it at all.

Ownership by state: ACS one-year estimates, 2024, table B25007; the 2000 anchor is Census 2000 SF3 table H014, which uses identical age brackets.
National ownership: Housing Vacancies and Homeownership, tables 12 and 19, annual 1982 to 2025 plus the first quarter of 2026.
Buyer age and buyer share: National Mortgage Database, home-purchase originations, annual 1998 to 2024.
Survey estimates belong to their publishers: the Realtors’ Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers, Redfin’s read of Census survey data, and the New York Fed’s Consumer Credit Panel.

American Community Survey estimates carry margins of error. In the state ranking most neighboring pairs are close enough to be statistical ties, so this article describes bands and defends only the comparisons that clear their combined margin. The 2000 long-form sample publishes no margin on this table, so changes since 2000 are tested against the current year’s margin alone.

Bottom line

The typical first-time buyer is somewhere in the low-to-mid thirties, and every dataset built from actual loan records agrees on that. The 40 that senators and social feeds keep repeating is one survey of one slice of the market, and its own publisher describes the method plainly.

What genuinely changed is the toll on the way in. A bigger down payment, a higher credit score, and often a check from a parent. If you are 35 and still renting, the useful question is not whether you are late. It is which state you are standing in.

Frequently asked questions

How old is the average home buyer in the United States?

The median age of all home buyers is 59, according to the Realtors’ most recent annual profile, and repeat buyers alone have a median age of 62. That number covers everyone, not first-timers. Mortgage records put the average age of a home-purchase borrower at 41.

What is the average age of a first-time home buyer by state?

No agency publishes a first-time buyer age for each state. Federal mortgage data does publish the average age of everyone taking out a home-purchase loan in each state, and it runs from 38 in North Dakota to 46 in Delaware. The table above carries all 51 figures next to each state’s young-ownership rate.

Is Minnesota the best state for young homeowners?