The typical American homebuyer is older than ever before, National Association of Realtors data shows.
The association’s 2024 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers — the subject of a Bloomberg News report Monday (Nov. 4) — shows that the age of a typical homebuyer was 56, an all-time high.
It’s a situation that’s developed as many younger buyers find themselves priced out of the housing market, while older Americans use their home equity for cash purchases or to make big down payments.
The report also showed the share of first-time homebuyers shrunk to 24%, the lowest level since the association began recording the figures in 1981.
The median age of a first-timer was another record – 38, a decade older than in the 1980s, the report said.
Steep borrowing costs and high prices have led to a divided housing market, one where sales increasingly go to repeat buyers and wealthier families. The median income for first-time buyers is now $97,000, up from $71,000 two years ago.
The report also shows a major increase in the number of single-women first-time buyers from a year earlier, with women making up 20% of the market, compared to 8% of single men.
And buyers are also increasingly white, at 83%, compared to 81% last year. Around 7% of recent buyers identified as Black, 6% as Hispanic, 4% Asian, and 3% as some other ethnicity, the report said.
The association’s findings come weeks after Fannie Mae’s Economic and Strategic Research (ESR) Group released findings on the American economy projecting that annual home prices would grow 5.8% in 2024 and 3.6% in 2025, up from earlier forecasts of a respective 6.1% and 3%.
“While potential homebuyers have noticed the decline in mortgage rates over the last few months, they are equally aware that there has been little relief on the home price side, the other primary driver of unaffordability, particularly for first-time buyers,” Fannie Mae Chief Economist Mark Palim said.
“The timing of the long-expected pickup in home sales activity, as well as a further moderation in home price appreciation, will depend in part on the willingness of current homeowners to relinquish their low mortgage rates by offering their homes for sale.”
On the other end of the spectrum, research by PYMNTS Intelligence finds that lower-income consumers are increasingly pressured by housing costs, which can eat up around 37% of take-home pay for people making less than $50,000 per year.
UBS reportedly could settle a case this week involving Credit Suisse, which UBS acquired in 2023.
The bank is set to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in the settlement of the case brought by the U.S. Department of Justice, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported Thursday (Jan. 9), citing unnamed sources.
UBS did not immediately reply to PYMNTS’ request for comment.
The case involves Credit Suisse’s violations of an agreement with the DOJ. The bank failed to follow through on its promise to provide the authorities with information about undeclared American-held accounts, according to the report.
Credit Suisse’s failure to report its closure of accounts with hundreds of millions of dollars allowed some U.S. taxpayers to move their accounts elsewhere without being detected, the report said.
That agreement, together with a $2.6 billion payout to authorities, followed Credit Suisse’s pleading guilty in 2014 to conspiring to help Americans cheat on their taxes, per the report.
The bank was acquired by UBS after Credit Suisse collapsed in 2023, per the report. As part of the acquisition, UBS set aside about $4 billion in legal provisions for any unresolved cases brought against Credit Suisse.
UBS completed its merger with Credit Suisse, which was its rival and a fellow Swiss banking giant, in June. With this move, UBS inherited all the rights and obligations of Credit Suisse.
In October, the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) said it would require UBS to revise its recovery and emergency plans due to its takeover of Credit Suisse.
FINMA said the bank must harmonize the group structures, processes and IT platforms due to the integration, and must provide additional options for action to strengthen its crisis preparations and resolution planning.
A UBS spokesperson told PYMNTS at the time that the bank had already begun doing so.
“As FINMA confirms in its press release, UBS meets the current requirements to be resolvable in accordance with the preferred resolution strategy in the event of a crisis,” the UBS statement said. “The experience of the Credit Suisse crisis and the rescue by UBS now require the further development of resolution planning in order to expand existing plans in a targeted manner. UBS has already started this work.”