Kate Wood
👤 SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
You are good, okay?
We are good on that goal.
Another 2025 stat that really jumps out, and I need to actually give a shout out to my editor, Jeanette, because she was the one who pointed this out.
So last year, among all home buyers, only 24% had children under 18 in their households.
So fewer than a quarter.
In 1985, 58% of buyer households had children.
So the conventional wisdom has been that spring is home buying season, right?
And one reason why spring is time to list is because people have time to house shop, school's letting out.
It's summer, they'll have time to move and then get settled into a new place before school starts again.
But if most home buyers don't have kids, that timing is probably not that relevant to them.
And, you know, you can say, oh, you know, well, spring home buying season is about the weather warming up and that kind of thing.
But again, back to climate change, weather patterns are very off track all over the country.
So that argument might not hold up either.
So I would definitely agree with what you said about rates and inventory and also what you said earlier about the coming affordability crisis.
It's something that I've been watching.
We have this idea that home affordability is something that's essentially solved once you've bought a home, especially if you have a 30-year fixed rate mortgage, which is the standard in the U.S.
This is the vast majority of home loans.
You've essentially stabilized your housing costs.
And that is true in terms of your principal, how much you borrowed, and your interest rate, right?
But we can't forget about the TI half of our PITI, right?