A Profile of Today’s Average First-Time Homebuyer

Zillow Real Estate Research found that today’s first-time homebuyers are typically “older, singler, and not much richer” than in previous decades.

According to data from the University of Michigan’s Panel Survey of Income Dynamics, which Zillow used for its analysis, today’s homebuyers also rent for longer before purchasing their own home. In the 1970s, when such data was first recorded, the median number of years homebuyers rented before were 2.5 years. Today it is 6 years.

Additionally, a smaller share of first-time buyers are married, 40 percent today compared to over half of all first-time buyers in the 1980s.

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