The Boomer Hold

[00:00:00]There's a kitchen in Sacramento that explains the entire housing market. The owner bought the house in 1991 for $172,000 on an 8.5% mortgage. They refinanced during the pandemic into a 2.875% mortgage. The house is now worth around $620,000.

[00:00:20]They are now 64 years old. They are not moving. If they sold and rebought an equivalent home today, they'd swap that 2.875% mortgage [music] for one at roughly 6.23%.

[00:00:33]On a $400,000 loan, monthly payments jump from about $1,660 to about $2,450. [music] Over 30 years, that's more than $280,000 in extra interest just for the privilege of moving. Federal Housing Finance Agency researchers found that for every percentage point the market rate exceeds a borrower's existing rate, the probability of selling drops by 18.1%.

[00:01:01]Between Q2 2022 and Q2 2024, this lock-in effect prevented an estimated 1.72 million home sales. [music] The result, existing home sales hit 4 million in 2024, the lowest since 1995 in a country with roughly 70 million more people. The median seller age is now 64, the highest in 44 years.

[00:01:26]First-time [snorts] buyers [music] have fallen to just 21% of the market and their median age has climbed to 40. That kitchen, multiplied across tens of millions of households, is the American housing market. The starter home is being hoarded.