The housing affordability crisis isn’t just crushing millennials—it’s squeezing out buyers in their 40s, 50s and beyond too

New data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York shows a surprising phenomenon: The average age of first-time homebuyers getting a mortgage has barely budged over the past two decades, remaining in the mid-30s. At first glance, that doesn’t seem to make sense. You’d think that given the steep rise in home prices versus incomes, it’s primarily the young who delay purchases as they get stuck in rentals waiting for paychecks, and banking savings. The evidence says not so. Expanding on the New York Fed’s findings, a new study from the American Enterprise Institute’s Housing Center concludes that the same problem is haunting would-be buyers at all age levels. “When purchasing power declines, fewer people buy homes at 28—but also fewer purchase at 38 or 48,” writes the author, the Housing Center’s co-director Ed Pinto. “The result is a broad-based drop in home ownership.” The AEI also points to a disturbing trend that amounts to the de-democratization of American housing. “The less-rich are getting squeezed out, and that trend is uniform across all age groups,” Pinto told Fortune . The overriding problem is well known. It’s the notorious affordability issue, and as Pinto points out, the crux isn’t excessively high mortgage rates: That monthly nut is now about average compared to the historic norm. It’s the huge divergence between median home prices and household incomes that’s stymied would-be buyers; what families are paying for the cape or colonial as a multiple of their paychecks has jumped from 4.3 in 2003 and 5.1 in 2017 to nearly 6.0 today. The surprise is that all age groups are getting pounded about equally. Mining data from the Census Bureau and its American Community Survey, the AEI shows that from 2000 to 2022, the home ownership rate in every age cohort dropped in the 8% to 10% range. For 35-year olds, it went from 60% to 50%, for those aged 40 from 70% to 59%, and for the 50 contingent from 78% to 69%. As for 30 to 39 year olds, the big first-time group, t…