First-time homebuyers continue to get older nationwide — and likely in Utah.
The median age for purchasing a first home in the United States has now reached an all-time high of 40, according to an annual survey by the National Association of Realtors, up from last year’s record-breaking age of 38.
“It’s kind of a shocking number,” Jessica Lautz, deputy chief economist and vice president of research at the association, told The New York Times, adding that the “steep climb” has come only in recent years.
Typical first-time homebuyers were under 30 in the 1980s, according to the association’s 2025 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers, which this year features an older couple in the midst of moving on the cover.
The median age for first-time homebuyers didn’t hit 30 until 1989, association data shows. By the time the COVID-19 pandemic sparked a housing frenzy in 2021, the median age was 33, jumping to 36 in 2022, when mortgage rates more than doubled from record lows.
The new median age is based on information collected from responses to a survey of homebuyers throughout the country who purchased a primary residence home between July 2024 and June 2025.
Are some Utahns giving up on buying a home?
While the Utah Association of Realtors doesn’t have similar data on the age of first-time homebuyers, the organization’s vice president, Aaron Drussel, said he believes they’re getting older here, too.
“It’s pretty comparable to the national numbers, at least what I’ve seen,” Drussel said.
In his more than two decades in real estate, he said the age of Utahns purchasing a home for the first time “wouldn’t be older than the national average, so it would be on par with the national average or maybe slightly under. I think it would be pretty close.”
Utah’s would-be homeowners are “fighting the same fight” as the rest of the country, Drussel said, even though the state’s young population traditionally marries and starts families at an earlier age.
“It’s still an affordability issue,” he said, “a situation with people struggling to be able to buy their first house and that’s a tricky situation. ... It’s not an easy road for the first-time homebuyer.”
A big issue in Utah, Drussel said, is that the state is “still kind of behind in the creation of new homes” priced for first-time buyers after the pandemic drove up prices for existing properties by fueling bidding wars.
Gov. Spencer Cox’s goal is 35,000 more starter homes in Utah by 2028, but a statewide housing dashboard shows just over 5,800 have been built so far. This year, “starter condos" were added to the type of homes that can tap public funds set aside for loans to builders.
The difficulty in finding an affordable home, combined with the hope that mortgage rates may fall, has made many first-time buyers hesitant to even try, Drussel said. Economic uncertainty stemming from President Donald Trump’s policies is also a factor, polls show.
“You have a lot of people who maybe feel like it’s unattainable to be able to buy so they have kind of resolved to take a step back,” he said, adding that “some of them don’t want to risk the heartbreak of not being able to make something work.”
Here’s the percentage of younger homebuyers in Utah
Dejan Eskic, a senior fellow at the University of Utah’s Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute, said the best data available on the age of homebuyers in Utah is from the U.S. government’s Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
But the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data from the bureau only provides age ranges for all mortgage holders, not just first-time buyers. The data also excludes cash purchases that Eskic said make up about 10% of home sales in Utah.
Data from 2024, the most current available, shows Utahns aged 25-34 accounted for 35% of new mortgages in the state, compared to 25% for ages 35-44, 16% for ages 45-54, and a total of 14% of everyone older than 55. Just 9% of Utahns under 25 got a new mortgage in 2024.
“Because we’re the youngest state in the nation, we’d probably be a little lower,” when asked about the typical age for a first home purchase in Utah, Eskic said, adding that it’s likely that someone with a new mortgage in their 30s is a first-time homebuyer.
Affordability is “100%” behind first-time homebuyers getting older around the country, he said. “Younger people can afford less so that’s why that number keeps getting pushed up. You age, you save a little bit more money, you have more resources. It just takes a little bit more.”