NAR's 2025 data shows first-time buyers at an all-time low of 21% while equity-rich repeat buyers now make up 79% of the market. Agents still targeting the wrong audience aren't running a strategy — they're running a habit.
.png)
.png)
In November 2025, NAR dropped its annual Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers.
Most agents glanced at it. A few ignored it entirely. Almost none of them changed anything about their sales systems.
Here's the number that should have stopped every agent cold:
First-time buyers now make up just 21% of the market. The lowest share since NAR began tracking in 1981. Before 2008, they consistently accounted for about 40% of all home sales. (National Association of Realtors)
Let that sit for a second.
The share of first-time buyers in the market has contracted by 50% since 2007, right before the Great Recession. (Source)
And yet scroll through any agent's Facebook ads, Instagram content, or email list and what do you find? First-time buyer tips. Down payment assistance guides. "Renting vs. buying" breakdowns. Content built entirely for people who, statistically, are not in the market right now.
Here's the analogy that should make this obvious.
Imagine you own a steakhouse. And a study comes out showing that only 21% of diners in your city eat red meat. The other 79% have shifted to chicken, fish, and plant-based. Costs are up, beef is expensive, the customer has changed.
What do you do?
Most agents keep running the same steakhouse. Same menu. Same lead gen that doesn't work. Same pitch. Then they wonder why the dining room is half empty.
The market did not hide this shift. NAR published it. The data is free.
The problem is that most agents built their marketing identity around a buyer profile that no longer dominates the market and have not updated a single thing.
So who is actually buying?
Repeat home buyers now make up 79% of all buyers. Thirty percent paid all cash. The median buyer age reached a record 59. All-cash buyers are at 26% — an all-time high. The median seller age is 64 years, the highest ever recorded.
This is your market. Equity-rich. Older. Financially stable.
Not searching for "how to save for a down payment." Not watching your reel about mortgage rate buydowns.
They are looking for an agent who understands their situation and one that has a proven system and process, not someone that kind of has it put together.
They need someone who knows how to price a home they have lived in for a decade. Someone who can speak to the tax implications of selling, the logistics of downsizing, the emotional weight of leaving a home where they raised a family. Someone with a clear plan, not a hustle mentality.
The agents winning right now are not the ones working harder. They are the ones who read that sentence and immediately asked, "Does my entire sales system and strategy reflect this reality?"
If your sales system is pointed at the 21%, you are not running a business strategy. You are running a habit. And habits are not systems.
A real system starts with the right target. Then it builds the message, the channel, and the follow-up sequence around the actual buyer and seller that exists in today's market, not the one from 2012.
The data is not the problem. The data is the clearest it has ever been. The question is whether your strategy reflects it.
What could be better than a knowledgeable, lively group of people who have a passion for what they do and are good at it, too? We have put together an extraordinary team of innovative, committed members who put client success first.
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)