Kate Wood

She says many homeowners don't realize that just because they have a fixed mortgage, their monthly payment can still go up because of insurance and property tax.

She says more severe weather events have driven up home insurance prices.

Even intense regular weather events like rain and hail have raised costs.

As for potential buyers last year, just 29 percent managed to buy a new home.

The most common complaint?

Availability and affordability.

Stephen Basaha, NPR News.

It is truly the end of an era because our very own Holden actually can probably tell us about having enough to pay for retirement because he's retiring at the end of this year.

Well, every year when we're coming around to the new year and you're in the mortgage space, you're in the homeownership space, you always get these headlines that are like, whatever year it's about to be, colon, the year the housing market normalizes.

And like we got those in 2022, 2023, four or five.

2026 is not going to be the year the housing market normalizes.

And really, we need to get rid of the idea that

we're going to go back to some real or imagined norm because things are really changing.

So since Holden was bringing up the early 80s, I grabbed some early 80s numbers for comparison.

So this is another 80s to now analogy.

And I'm pulling these from the National Association of Realtors.

They do an annual home buyers and sellers report.

It gives a lot of information on home sales, sellers, buyers in the U.S.,

So in 1981, the median age of first-time homebuyers was 29.

So almost 30.