First-Time Homebuyers Get 61% of Mortgage Offers on LendingTree [New Report]

Buying a home has been exceedingly difficult in the past few years.

With high mortgage rates and home prices, many would-be buyers stayed out of the housing market in 2024. But the latest LendingTree data shows that among those active in the market last year, first-time buyers received a larger share of offers. Here’s what else we found.

• 60.9% of mortgage offers to users on the LendingTree platform in 2024 went to those who identified as first-time homebuyers. While this figure is striking, it’s down from 65.3% in 2023.
• In New York, 3 in 4 — 76.1% — offers went to first-time buyers, down from 77.3% in 2023 but still the highest share in the U.S. California (70.0%) and New Jersey (69.2%) followed, also keeping their same rankings as in 2023.
• At 47.1%, Alaska was the only state below 50.0% — a significant drop from 54.4% in 2023. It’s joined in the bottom three by New Mexico (51.2%) and Arkansas (52.4%).
• 49.7% of mortgage offers that went to first-time buyers in 2024 went to millennials ages 28 to 43, ahead of Gen Zers ages 18 to 27 at 29.0%. The average age of first-time homebuyers is 36 — right in the middle of the millennial range.

You can check out the full report here: https://www.lendingtree.com/home/mortgage/first-time-homebuyers-study/

LendingTree's Chief Consumer Finance Analyst, Matt Schulz, had this to say:

"It makes all the sense in the world that most mortgage offers would go to first-time buyers today. So many homeowners likely feel trapped because they bought their current place when rates were really low. They don't want to trade their current low-rate deal for today's much higher rates, so they just don't move. First-time buyers don't have that problem."