On average, 40% of builders’ single-family home sales so far in 2024 have been made to first-time home buyers, according to the most recent NAHB/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index survey (HMI). That share has doubled since 2016, when only 19% of builders’ sales went to first-time buyers.
Our limited time-series on this topic in the HMI survey indicates that first-time home buyers purchased an increasing share of new homes between 2016 and 2021, when the proportion rose from 19% to 43%. Unfortunately, the series has a two-year hiatus (2019 and 2020) when no data are available.
Since 2021, however, growth in the new home first-time buyer share has stopped. After holding steady at 43% in 2022, the share has lost ground in each of the past two years, slipping to 42% in 2023 and then to 40% in 2024.
More granular analysis shows there is a direct correlation between the first-time buyer share and builder size. In other words, the larger the builder, the more likely it is for a higher share of its sales to go to people buying a home for the first time.
To be more precise, builders with 1 to 5 single-family starts a year reported that only about 18% of their sales so far in 2024 have gone to first-time buyers. That average increases to 21% among builders with 6 to 24 starts, to 34% among those with 25 to 99 starts, and reaches 44% among builders who start at least 100 homes a year.
