**America Just Hit a New Record, But Not a Good One
Bradley Devlin | January 21, 2026
America has hit another record, but it’s not a good one.
Last year, the median age of the first-time homebuyer in
America hit 40 years old. In the 1980s, the average age of the
first-time homebuyer in America was just 28.
What happened?
Higher interest rates in recent years have taken their toll,
but today’s interest rates are nothing compared to the 1980s,
when the first-time buyer’s age was much lower.
The answer is that housing prices have gone up, and for many
different reasons. While an average house was around three times
the average annual American wage, the average house now costs
around seven times the average annual income.
Part of the reason that home prices have shot up is that
large, multibillion-dollar institutional investors are increasingly
snapping up homes.
These institutions have crowded out younger families who can’t
compete, which has contributed to older first-time homebuyers. It’s
an issue that Rep. Pat Harrigan, R-N.C., has thought a lot about,
and he joins us this week on “The Signal Sitdown” to explain how
this happened and his proposal to fix it.
“During the Great Recession, you had the middle class losing
their rear ends because they were getting underwater on their
houses,” Harrigan told The Daily Signal.
In response, both the Bush administration and the Obama ad-
ministration were “really encouraging institutional investors to
come into the market, particularly in certain ZIP codes. And in
many respects that was actually very helpful because it actually
propped up and helped to stabilize market prices, and probably
prevented a lot of middle-class Americans from getting kicked out
of their homes, honestly,” Harrigan explained.
But in Harrigan’s telling, there was a cultural understanding
that underpinned this new arrangement.
“There was also kind of a cultural understanding that as soon
as the market stabilized, they were supposed to divest of those
investments,” Harrigan continued. “Instead, they liked the appre-
ciation, they liked the revenue coming in from it, and when you
amass enough homes in a certain ZIP code, you actually start kind
of controlling the market a little bit. And so, they actually
bought more.”
These financial institutions have increased the number of
homes they own by eight times since the Great Recession.
“At the end of the great recession, there were about a hundred
thousand homes that were owned by institutional investors,”
Harrigan claimed. “Today, by some accounts, it’s almost 750,000
homes across the country.”
“Just in my state of North Carolina, in Charlotte, 18% of the
single-family homes on the rental market are institutionally owned,”
Harrigan added.
“I do think we can all recognize it’s now gotten to a point
where it is crowding out middle-class homebuyers, particularly in
certain ZIP codes across the country that are more popular than
others,” Harrigan said. “That is having a very negative impact on
the wealth-building trajectory of our middle class.”
As Americans pursue the dream of homeownership, they “should-
n’t be competing against the company that’s managing your 401k.”
“The longer that you delay somebody from getting into that
first house, the longer you delay their wealth-building trajectory
toward actually putting themselves in a very solid, fiscally re-
sponsible position, which is where you want the middle class,”
Harrigan said of delaying homeownership.
In the House, Harrigan has just introduced the Families First
Housing Act with Rep. Josh Riley, D-N.Y., in an attempt to give
American families a leg up on institutional investors.
The Families First Housing Act, Harrigan explained, requires
government entities auctioning homes “to provide 180-day first
look to non-institutional investors.”
“We want to narrowly tailor this to get to a point where we
don’t think it’s unconstitutional [or] gets thrown out by the
courts at some point later down the road,” Harrigan added.
“I think that the solution that we laid out on the table,
either in its current form or a slightly expanded form of it, is
something that’s palatable,” Harrigan said, “I think it’s some-
thing that’s reasonable. I think culturally it’s something that
all Americans could say, ‘Yeah, I think that’s a good idea.’ And
I think that that serves the interests of the middle class.”**
Adding to the first paragraph, my Dad bought his home in 1960
for $10K. It sold in 1999 for about $70K.
We bought our first home in AL in 1979 (I was 30) for $17K
and sold it in 1984.
I bought my next home in 1987 at 38. It was 1800 SF for $69K
in NJ and sold it for $107K in 1999 and another home of 1700 SF
in 1988 in AL for $42K and sold it for $146K in 1999.
In 1999 we bought a home in FL for $112K that is currently
valued at about $300K.
My point is that the prices are now too high for a young
couple to buy a home even with 2 incomes.
The homes are being bought up and then rented while the
owners go rent a place to live for less than a mortgage.
Clinton started a lot of this problem using HUD homes back
in the 1990s.
They are killing the housing market.
God may have to intervene to save Americans who would love
a part of the "American Dream". "PRAY"
Conservatively,
John
Conservativelyjohn.com 