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For a while, it seemed millennials had taken over the home-buying market, making more purchases than any other generation every year from 2014 to 2022, according to the National Association of Realtors.
That makes sense: They're the largest generation and - at roughly 26 to 44 years old, many with careers launched - they're in what's typically seen as their prime home-buying years.
Then, in the past year, something strange happened: Baby boomers reclaimed the top spot for home purchases, a NAR report published this week shows.
It wasn't by a small margin, either. The group's report last year, which surveyed home buyers in 2023, found that millennials bought 38 percent of homes, compared with 31 percent for boomers. This year's report showed that boomers shot up to 42 percent of buyers, while millennials fell to 29 percent.
Gen X-ers were a distant third, at 24 percent, while Gen Z has barely tapped into the market, representing 3 percent of purchases, the report showed.
The reason for the boomer comeback, say real estate agents and economists, is that high mortgage rates and home prices have shut many younger would-be buyers out of the market, while boomers have so much equity in their homes that many of them are able to sell and then buy with cash.
"If you take a millennial who's in the midst of having children and in their prime earning years, and they're going up against someone who's been earning for 30 years and has a tremendous amount of equity, who's going to win?" said Dana Rice, a D.C.-area real estate agent with Compass.
Rice noted that boomers (defined by NAR as born between 1946 and 1964) and millennials (born 1980 to 1998) are not always competing for the same properties. Some boomers are downsizing to smaller houses or condos, while millennials may be looking for family homes. But when they do compete, it's hardly a fair fight.
Jessica Lautz, NAR's deputy chief economist and vice president of research, said the older and younger halves of the millennial generation have different reasons for buying fewer homes right now.
"If we look at someone who is an older millennial in their 40s, if they are a homeowner, they've locked in a low interest-rate mortgage," Lautz said. "They may not be in a place in their life where they need to move. So they may be entrenched. At the same time, younger millennials have been shut out of the market."
Meanwhile, Lautz said, boomer homeowners "have equity and the freedom to make moves."
Another reason boomers are buying in large numbers is life changes, said Kimberly Casey, a D.C.-based agent with TTR Sotheby's International Realty.
"They're having a lot of life transitions," Casey said. "There are people who are like, 'I've been living at this property for 30 years, and now I want to move into the Ritz Georgetown.'"
Not all boomers are moving into the Ritz-Carlton Georgetown. But many have available cash, often in the form of home equity, which, when mortgage rates skyrocketed in 2022, put them at an advantage over other buyers who had to factor in loan interest rates.
The generational shifts come as the median age of first-time home buyers has crept upward, reaching 38 last year, according to NAR. In the 1980s, typical first-time buyers were in their late 20s.
Now, people selling their old homes represent a higher share of people buying new ones, so it's no surprise that boomers also make up the largest share of sellers - 53 percent of the total, according to NAR.
The latest report's findings, first reported by UrbanTurf, are based on survey responses by 5,390 people who bought homes between July 2023 and June 2024. Lautz said they show just how unequal the housing market has gotten.
"It just underscores the housing market that we know that we have, with the haves and the have-nots," she said. "Homeowners have equity and the freedom to make moves. And potential first-time home buyers are seeing that and getting shut out."
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