The typical American homeowner has been in the same house for 12 years now, and the country as a whole moves less than it ever has. Just 7.8% of Americans changed address in the most recent year on record, down from one in five in the 1950s, and that freeze keeps stretching the average length of home ownership.[1]
The typical owner has been in their current home for 12 years, per the newest Census survey.
Homes that actually sold changed hands after an average of 8.44 years, so the right answer depends on which homes you count.
Owners are split into two camps: 43.1% haven’t moved in 15 or more years, while 25.1% arrived in 2020 or later.
Sellers had owned their homes a median of 11 years before selling, an all-time high in the national Realtor survey.
State turnover varies almost 3 to 1, from 12.70 years per sale in Massachusetts down to 4.44 in Maine.
Here’s how those numbers fit together, year by year and state by state.
How long does the average person own a home?
The average length of home ownership in the US is 8 to 12 years, depending on how you count. The typical owner has been in their current home for 12 years, per the newest Census survey.[1] Homes that actually sold tell a shorter story: 8.44 years of ownership on average, from ATTOM’s first-quarter 2026 deed analysis.[2]
Sellers who answered NAR’s survey land in between, at a median of 11 years in the home they gave up.[4] Count everyone staying put and you get 12. Count only the homes that just sold and you get closer to 8.
Four answers to one question. Each source counts a different group of homes.
12 yrsCensus: all current ownersmedian time in home
12.0 yrsRedfin: all owned homesmedian since last sale
11 yrsNAR: surveyed sellersmedian before selling
8.44 yrsATTOM: homes sold in Q1average at sale
Census ACS; Redfin 2025 county-records analysis; NAR 2025 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers; ATTOM Q1 2026.
The industry calls this homeowner tenure, and every source counts it differently. The Census asks owners when they moved in. Redfin reads county records for every owned home,[3] NAR surveys people who just sold,[4] and ATTOM averages the deeds from one quarter of sales.[2] None of them is wrong. They’re answering different questions.
Average length of home ownership by state
Owners stay put longest in Hawaii, New York, and Pennsylvania, where the typical owner has been home 15 to 16 years.[1] The quickest-turnover states are a three-way tie: Arizona, Florida, and Nevada, at 9 years each. Sun Belt growth pulls those numbers down, because every new arrival resets the clock.
Sales records tell their own version. Massachusetts sellers had owned an average of 12.70 years, longest of any state, while Maine came in last at 4.44.[2] And Maine is the proof that the two measures answer different questions: its year-round owners have been in place 13 years, yet its homes sell after the shortest ownership stretch in the country. A settled population and a churning vacation-home market can both be true.
Shaded by rank, darkest = longest-staying owners (Hawaii, 16 years). Census owner medians; typical margin of error is about a year.Shaded by median years in the current home, from 9 (Arizona, Florida, Nevada) up to 16 (Hawaii).
Source: Census Bureau, American Community Survey (owner medians, newest release).
The table carries both measures side by side. The Census column tells you how long current owners have stayed. The ATTOM columns tell you how quickly homes actually change hands, plus how many sales were all cash.
Rank
State
Yrs in home
Yrs at sale
Sale rank
Cash %
1
Hawaii
16
9.28
10
75.8
2
New York
15
8.68
16
54.7
2
Pennsylvania
15
8.34
18
37.7
4
Connecticut
14
12.53
2
33.8
4
Massachusetts
14
12.70
1
37.5
4
New Jersey
14
9.71
9
32.8
4
West Virginia
14
6.13
47
36.9
8
California
13
10.96
4
34.1
8
Illinois
13
9.14
11
40.6
8
Louisiana
13
7.15
29
—
8
Maine
13
4.44
50
—
8
Maryland
13
9.72
7
27.7
8
Mississippi
13
6.04
48
—
8
New Mexico
13
8.28
19
—
8
Ohio
13
7.86
21
50.3
8
Rhode Island
13
11.07
3
47.3
8
Vermont
13
6.87
36
—
8
Wisconsin
13
6.75
39
43.2
19
Alabama
12
6.52
43
51.4
19
Delaware
12
7.25
27
43.9
19
Indiana
12
6.56
42
—
19
Iowa
12
7.11
30
28.6
19
Kansas
12
6.83
37
—
19
Kentucky
12
6.29
45
32.2
19
Michigan
12
7.41
25
38.9
19
Minnesota
12
7.49
23
36.9
19
Missouri
12
6.81
38
—
19
Nebraska
12
7.32
26
28.8
19
New Hampshire
12
9.72
8
47.6
19
Virginia
12
7.20
28
33.2
31
Alaska
11
8.75
14
—
31
Arkansas
11
6.61
41
38.5
31
Georgia
11
6.19
46
57.0
31
Montana
11
7.81
22
—
31
North Carolina
11
7.06
34
41.4
31
North Dakota
11
7.08
31
—
31
Oklahoma
11
7.07
32
43.4
31
South Carolina
11
6.72
40
46.2
31
South Dakota
11
5.71
49
—
31
Tennessee
11
9.10
12
36.3
31
Washington
11
10.34
5
28.4
31
Wyoming
11
6.95
35
—
43
Colorado
10
8.00
20
41.6
43
District of Columbia
10
—
—
—
43
Idaho
10
6.48
44
—
43
Oregon
10
9.86
6
34.9
43
Texas
10
7.47
24
—
43
Utah
10
7.06
33
—
49
Arizona
9
8.81
13
43.3
49
Florida
9
8.74
15
48.0
49
Nevada
9
8.68
17
36.6
–
United States
12
8.44
–
—
Yrs in home: Census ACS owner medians (rank sorts this column; ties share a rank). Yrs at sale, sale rank, and all-cash share: ATTOM Q1 2026 home-sales analysis. DC: Census only. Click any header to sort.
Cash tells its own story here. Roughly 40% of sales nationwide closed without a mortgage, and in Hawaii it was 75.8%.[2]
One definition matters before you sort. Length of ownership measures how long people stay. It is not the homeownership rate, which counts the 65.3% of households that own at all;[1] we break that side down in our US housing statistics review.
Average length of home ownership by year
In 2005, the typical owned home had last changed hands just 6.5 years earlier, per Redfin’s county-records analysis.[3] Homeowner tenure then nearly doubled, peaking at 13.4 years in 2020, slid to 11.8 by 2024 during the pandemic moving wave, and ticked back up to 12.0 in 2025. The doubling everyone quotes is real, but almost all of it happened between 2005 and 2012.
Here’s the part the doubling story misses. The Census has asked owners the same question since 2010, and its answer has barely moved: 10 years in 2010, 13 at the high points, 12 now.[1] The frenzy of 2005 was the outlier, not today.
Two tenure series, side by side. The records-based line doubled from its 2005 start; the Census line has stayed between 10 and 13 the whole time it has been asked.
Solid: Census ACS owner median years-in-home (2010–2024; the survey skipped 2020). Dotted: Redfin analysis of county records, published anchor years only.
Americans move less than they ever have
The bigger change hiding under homeowner tenure is that Americans simply stopped moving. In the early 1950s, about one in five people changed address every year. By 2005 it was 13.9%, and the latest count is 7.8%, the lowest in the 75 years the Census has kept score.[5]
Homeownership length is the mirror image of that collapse. When fewer people move, the years pile up in place. Same data, opposite direction.
Share of Americans who moved in the past year, 1948 to 2023. The gaps in the early series are years the survey did not publish.
Census Bureau, Current Population Survey, historical geographic mobility Table A-1. Points shown are the years carried in our source table.
How long have today’s owners been in their homes?
Nearly one in four owners, 24.1%, has been in the same house for 25 years or more.[1] Stretch the line to 15 years and it covers 43.1% of all owners. At the other end, 25.1% moved in during 2020 or later.
That’s a market split into permanent residents and recent arrivals. The middle is thinning out. Owners who might have traded up a decade ago are staying put instead.
When today’s owners moved in. The two green bands at the bottom are the 43.1% who have stayed 15-plus years; the top two rows are the 25.1% who arrived in 2020 or later.
2023 or later7.3%
2020–202217.8%
2010–201931.8%
2000–200919.0%
1990–199912.1%
1989 or earlier12.0%
43.1% moved in 15 or more years ago · 25.1% arrived in 2020 or later
Census ACS table B25038, owner-occupied homes, newest release. Bins are the survey’s own move-in periods.
Which cities have the longest homeowner tenure?
Los Angeles, and it isn’t close. The typical LA owner has held their home for 20 years, the longest tenure of any major metro and 5 full years longer than a decade ago, per Redfin’s county-records analysis.[3] San Jose runs nearly as long at 18.7 years, with Cleveland at 17.8.
The quickest turnover shows up in affordable, fast-growing metros. Louisville owners sell after a typical 8.3 years, and Las Vegas after 8.8. But the direction is one-way right now: tenure rose in 28 of the 41 largest metros in the latest year measured.[3]
Longest and shortest typical owner tenure among the 41 biggest metros, in years.
Longest
Los Angeles20.0
San Jose18.7
Cleveland17.8
Shortest
Las Vegas8.8
Louisville8.3
Redfin analysis of county records, 2025 edition.
How long do first-time home buyers stay in their home?
Buyers under 35 turn over fastest: 49% of them have owned their current home for three years or less, per a Redfin analysis of Census data.[3] That fits the classic pattern. The first home is the one you outgrow when kids, jobs, or space push you out.
But new buyers no longer plan it that way. The median buyer now expects to stay 15 years, and 28% call the house they just bought their forever home.[4] Sellers actually stayed a median of 11 years. Expectations run well ahead of reality.
The forever-home gap: expectations run well ahead of what sellers actually do.
What buyers expect to stay15 yrs
What sellers actually stayed11 yrs
Average for homes sold in Q18.44 yrs
Expected tenure and seller tenure: NAR 2025 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers. Average at sale: ATTOM Q1 2026.
Why are homeowners staying longer?
Age and interest rates, mostly. Owners 65 and older have typically been in their homes 23 years or more, and empty-nest baby boomers hold 28% of the country’s homes with three or more bedrooms, twice the share held by millennials with kids.[3] Anyone sitting on a pandemic-era mortgage rate has a very expensive reason not to move.
Tax rules pile on in some states. California’s Proposition 13 caps assessed-value growth at 2% a year until a home sells, so a longtime Los Angeles owner can pay a fraction of a new neighbor’s property tax bill. That’s a big part of why LA tenure leads the nation.[3]
First-time buyers pay the price for all of it. They made up just 21% of buyers in the newest NAR profile, a record low, and the median first-timer is now 40 years old.[4] When nobody leaves, nobody new gets in.
Who holds the family-sized houses: share of US homes with three or more bedrooms.
Empty-nest boomers28%
Millennials with kidshalf that
Redfin analysis, 2024. The millennial bar is drawn at half the boomer share, as the analysis reports.
How long should you own a house before selling?
Two waypoints matter more than any average. Stay at least two of the last five years and the IRS lets you exclude up to $250,000 of gain from taxes, or $500,000 for married couples filing jointly.[6] And the old rule of thumb says five to seven years is roughly what it takes for appreciation to cover your buying and selling costs.
Neither is a law of nature. But if you’re selling before year two, you should have a good reason.
Three waypoints on the ownership clock.
Year 2Capital-gains exclusion unlocks (IRS: 2 of the last 5 years)
Years 5–7The traditional break-even rule of thumb
Year 11Median actual seller (NAR survey)
IRS Section 121; NAR 2025 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers. The 5–7-year rule is folk wisdom, not a statute.
Methodology: four sources, kept separate on purpose
They measure different things, so we never blend them. The Census American Community Survey (tables B25038 and B25039, 2024, the newest release) gives the median year owners moved into their homes; we report it as years in the home, and its state medians carry a margin of error of about one year.[1]ATTOM’s Q1 2026 home-sales report averages the ownership length of homes sold in the quarter, from county deed records; it covers 50 states and skips DC.[2]Redfin’s 2025 tenure analysis takes the median years since last sale across all owned homes in county records, back to 2005.[3]NAR’s 2025 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers surveys people who bought or sold between July 2024 and June 2025.[4] The moving series is the Census Current Population Survey, Table A-1, 1948 to 2023.[5]
The vintage ladder: what’s newest at each level
Census ACS 2024 — owner medians, national + all states + DC (used for the map and table)
ATTOM Q1 2026 — average tenure at sale, 50 states (the next quarterly lands mid-summer)
Redfin 2025 edition — median tenure of all owned homes, national + 41 metros
One limit worth stating plainly: there is no single official “average length of homeownership,” so we show you every measure rather than blending them into a number nobody publishes.
Bottom line
Twelve years is the best single answer for how long Americans own their homes, and it’s been drifting up for two decades because the whole country moves less. The deeper truth is a split market: 43.1% of owners haven’t moved in 15 years while a quarter arrived since 2020, and record-low turnover is what a 40-year-old median first-time buyer looks like from the other side.
If you’re buying now, plan like the data says: the house you pick is likely a longer commitment than the one your parents made. Where you put down those years is the bigger question, and our ranking of the best states to live in America is a fair place to start.
Frequently asked questions
What is the average time in a home before selling?
The average time in a home before selling is 11 years, the median for sellers in NAR’s 2025 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers and an all-time high for that survey. County deed records run shorter: homes that sold in early 2026 had been owned an average of 8.44 years, per ATTOM’s Q1 2026 home-sales analysis.
What percentage of Americans own their home?
In the US, 65.3% of households own their home, per the most recent Census survey. That number is the homeownership rate, which counts who owns at all. It is a different measure from length of ownership, which tracks how long owners stay, and the typical owner inside that 65.3% has been in place for 12 years.
What is the average homeowner tenure in California?
Homeowner tenure in California runs 13 years for the typical current owner, per the most recent Census data, compared with 12 nationally. Homes that actually sold had been owned for an average of 10.96 years, the fourth-longest stretch of any state, per ATTOM’s Q1 2026 home-sales analysis. Los Angeles leads every major metro at a typical 20 years, per Redfin’s analysis of county records.
What is the average age of a first-time home buyer?
The median first-time home buyer in the US is now 40 years old, a record high in NAR’s 2025 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers. That age was about 30 in 2010 and in the late 20s during the 1980s. First-timers also fell to 21% of all buyers, a record low, because so few owners are giving up their homes.
Sources
U.S. Census Bureau. “American Community Survey, 1-year estimates, tables B25038 and B25039.” 2024. data.census.gov
Chris Kolmar has been in the real estate business for almost ten years now. He originally worked for Movoto Real Estate as the director of marketing before founding HomeSnacks.
He believes the key to finding the right place to live comes down to looking at the data, reading about things to do, and, most importantly, checking it out yourself before you move.
If you've been looking for a place to live in the past several years, you've probably stumbled upon his writing already.
