33%: That’s the percentage of total buyers for the year that were first-timers. That number is a tick down from 2017’s 34%, but still represents the largest share of homebuyers today. Hello, millennial invasion.
46: Then again…maybe it’s not only millennials, because 46 was the median age of all buyers for the year. It just goes to show that age is not a deterrent to buying a home, on either end of the spectrum.
13%: That was the median down payment of all buyers for the year. There goes that myth that you need 20% down to buy a home! Breaking that statistic down further, repeat homebuyers had an average down payment of 16% last year, but, for first-time buyers, that number was just 7%.
$250,000: That was the median purchase price of a home last year. Think homeownership is still out of reach at that number? Here’s a few more digits that may be surprising:
• $91,600: That was the median household income of all buyers in the NAR report.
• 3.5%: That’s the minimum down payment required for a loan from the Federal Housing Authority (FHA), the most popular loan for first-time buyers in large part because of that low down payment requirement as well as generous credit score requirements.
• $8,750: That’s 3.5% of $250,000. Buy a home at the median price, and that's what you’ll have to come up with for an FHA loan.
18: That was the percentage of homebuyers who were single females last year. Additionally, 9% were single males, and 8% were unmarried couples. Who says you need to be married to buy a home?
12: That’s the percentage of homebuyers who bought a multigenerational home in 2018, “to take care of aging parents, because of children over the age of 18 moving back home, and for cost-saving,” said the NAR.
This is representative of a greater multigenerational trend across the country; The most recent data from the Pew Research Center in 2016 shows that, “A record 64 million people, or 20% of the U.S. population, lived with multiple generations under one roof.” The trend is strong across nearly all racial and age groups.
