A stunning new report from the National Association of Realtors (NAR) just confirmed what we all feel in our bones: the housing market is fundamentally broken.
According to the just-released 2025 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers, the share of first-time home buyers has plummeted to a record low of 21%, a far cry from the historic norm of 40%.
Even more shocking is who those few buyers are. The median age of a first-time homebuyer in America has hit a record high of 40.
To understand how catastrophic that is, you have to look at the timeline. For nearly 30 years, from 1991 to 2020, that number remained incredibly stable, rising slowly from 28 to 33. But in just the last five years, it has exploded. This isnât a slow trend; itâs an economic cliff.
We are watching an entire generation get sidelined. And here in Wake Forest, we are living in a super-charged version of this crisis, which has led to confusion over property taxes, anger over traffic, and a profound misunderstanding of who holds the power.
So, how did we get here? Who made these decisions? And what is the real cost to our town?
This didnât happen by accident. It was created by a series of massive economic decisions that collided at once, turning our housing market into a battlefield where the average person has no chance.
The âGolden Handcuffsâ: First, the Federal Reserveâs pandemic-era policy of slashing interest rates to historic lows (below 3%) had a massive, unforeseen consequence. Millions of existing homeowners refinanced. Today, they are âlocked inâ to those low rates. They cannot sell their homesâwhich would typically supply the marketâbecause buying a new one would mean taking on a 7% mortgage and doubling their monthly payment. The latest NAR report proves this: the typical homeowner is now staying in their home for a record-high 11 years, starving the market of inventory.
The One-Two Punch: As supply vanished, demand was hit by two sucker punches, both delivered by the Fed.
The Price Boom (2020-2022): Those same low rates, combined with a âWork From Homeâ frenzy, caused home prices to skyrocket over 40% in just a couple of years.
The Rate Shock (2022-2024): To fight the inflation it helped create, the Fed then slammed on the brakes, hiking interest rates at the fastest pace in history. Mortgage rates doubled, then tripled.
The âK-Shapedâ Market (Cash is King): This combination killed the traditional market. The only people left who can buy are those at the top of the âK.â The NAR report shows that all-cash purchases are at a record high of 26%, and the median age of a repeat buyer is now 62. The market is being run by cash-rich retirees and investors, not growing families.
This national crisis has a unique and painful impact locally. Our home values have skyrocketed, and many residents are seeing their property tax bills go up. Itâs natural to blame our local Town Commission for this.
But here is the paradox: The Town of Wake Forest has actually lowered the property tax rate.
Your tax bill is a simple formula: (Assessed Home Value) x (Tax Rate). The Town only controls the rate. The problem is that the value of your homeâdriven by the out-of-control, cash-fueled national marketâhas surged so dramatically that it has more than canceled out the rate cut.
The anger over higher taxes is real, but itâs misdirected. Itâs a direct symptom of the unchecked growth that is making our town unaffordable.
This brings us to the most critical question: If this growth is the problem, why doesnât our Town Commission… stop it?
The answer is simple: They canât.
For years, the North Carolina General Assembly in Raleigh has systematically stripped local governments of their power to manage growth. State law is now written overwhelmingly to favor developers and landowners.
If a developer submits a plan that meets our basic zoning code, our town has almost no legal power to deny it, even if we know our roads, schools, and infrastructure canât handle it.
This is why our townâs recent attempt to rewrite its Unified Development Ordinance (UDO) to plan for a more sustainable future was effectively âblown upâ by new laws from Raleigh that overruled our local efforts.
Our local elected officials are left with one weak tool: âconditionals.â They are forced to negotiate from a position of weakness, begging developers for small concessionsâa slightly better buffer, a turn laneârather than having the power to actually plan our community and demand the housing we genuinely need.
The actual cost isnât just a high tax bill or the traffic. The price is our future.
That gridlock we feel every day is the physical symptom of a multi-decade, multi-layered planning failure by the NCDOT and the state legislature.
First, itâs a symptom of our own affordability crisis. Itâs our teachers, firefighters, police officers, and service industry workers being forced into 45-minute commutes from cheaper counties because they canât afford to live in the towns they serve.
Second, itâs the daily flood of pass-through traffic from an explosive, unchecked development boom in Youngsville and Franklin County. This isnât a vague future problem. This month, Mungo Homes (a Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary) paid $35 million for 350 acres in Youngsville to build a new residential community. This is the very growth now being funneled onto our roads, and itâs the direct result of a catastrophic failure by the NCDOT to build the infrastructure ahead of the growth it encouraged.
The evidence is all in the stateâs own documents. The US-1 (Capital Boulevard) Upgradeâour main arteryâis still in the âfinal designâ and âpublic engagementâ phase as of 2025.
At the same time, the NC-96 Youngsville Bypassâa project the NCDOTâs own 2019 plan admitted was criticalâwas left unfunded by the state for so long that Youngsville is now trying to build it themselves, piecemeal, with their own money, federal grants, and help from private developers, to survive.
This is a complete failure of state leverage and a failure of regional leaders who pushed these projects aside until it was too late. Now, the traffic on Youngsvilleâs Main Street is so bad itâs like Jones Street in Raleigh when the legislators are rushing out for another long recess.
The people I grew up with have, for the most part, moved away. Itâs simply too expensive to start a family and own a home here. I was only able to move home after my military service by using a VA Home Loan back in 2018, when rates were at a historic low that we will likely never see again.
As the NAR report bleakly notes, delaying homeownership from age 30 to 40 can mean losing over $150,000 in equityâa loss of generational wealth that will echo for decades.
Iâve seen this town in its âterrible straitsâ after the plants closed. We are now risking a different kind of demographic declineânot from a lack of jobs, but from a self-inflicted lack of workers. A town that can only be âboughtâ by cash-rich retirees is not a sustainable community. Itâs a gilded retirement village, and itâs a recipe for long-term stagnation.
We have to act. That means focusing not just on the developers, but also on the state-level lawmakers who have handcuffed our town. And it means demanding that our local leaders use every last ounce of leverage they do have to force the creation of workforce housing, so that the people who work in Wake Forest can also live in Wake Forest.
Tom Baker IV is the publisher of Wake Forest Matters, Wake Forest’s only independent local newsroom. A Wake Forest native, Navy veteran, and intelligence professional, Tom launched Wake Forest Matters to bring serious accountability journalism to his hometown. Tips and story ideas: publisher@wakeforestmatters.com
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