Good morning, NREB readers.

As always, we're here to keep real estate professionals informed while cutting out the fluff. Let's get right into it.

Earlier this week, we looked at the shortage of entry-level inventory.

There is another issue hiding inside the homes that are available:

America's housing stock is getting old.

The median U.S. home was 44 years old in 2023, according to new analysis from Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies using the American Housing Survey.

A decade earlier, the median was 39.

In 1993, it was 28.

And roughly 22 million homeowners—about one in four—live in a home built before 1960.

Those numbers matter because houses do not age like ordinary consumer products.

They can last generations.

But keeping them usable requires continuous reinvestment.

Roofs wear out.

HVAC systems reach the end of their lives.

Windows deteriorate.

Electrical systems become outdated.

Plumbing ages.

Siding fails.

Insulation becomes inadequate.

And at some point, the money homeowners spend on a property begins shifting from:

toward:

That transition is becoming a larger part of the U.S. housing story.

Part of this is simple math.

The United States did not build enough new housing for a long stretch after the Great Recession.

When fewer new homes enter the market, the average age of everything already standing naturally rises.

At the same time, homes remain usable for a very long time.

Building codes have improved.

Materials have improved.

Owners renovate and repair properties rather than replacing them entirely.

A well-maintained house built in 1955 does not vanish because it turns 70.

It stays in the housing stock.

So America's inventory increasingly contains multiple generations of homes sitting beside one another:

new construction,

1990s subdivisions,

1970s ranch homes,

postwar houses,

prewar properties,

and in some markets, homes well over a century old.

That diversity is one of the strengths of the housing stock.

It also creates a growing maintenance requirement.

Harvard's analysis shows an important difference between the way owners spend money on newer and older homes.

For homes built before 1960, maintenance accounted for 22% of total remodeling and repair spending in 2023.

For homes built in 2010 or later, maintenance represented only 16%.

Replacement projects show an even bigger divide.

Roofing, siding, windows, insulation, HVAC systems, and other replacements accounted for 39% of homeowner spending on pre-1960 homes.

For homes built in 2010 or later, those replacement categories represented only 24%.

Newer homeowners have more room to spend money on discretionary projects.

Older homeowners increasingly spend money keeping existing components functioning.

That is a fundamentally different relationship with the house.

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Owners of homes built before 1960 spent an average of roughly $6,000 on improvements and maintenance in 2023.

Owners of homes built in 2010 or later spent approximately $4,500.

That means the older-home owners spent about 35% more.

And the pattern does not suddenly appear when a house turns 65.

Harvard found that average improvement and repair spending begins increasing substantially after homes pass roughly the 20-year mark and remains elevated as major components move through their replacement cycles.

Think about what that means for a home built in 2005.

It may not look "old."

But it is now more than 20 years into the life of its original components.

An original roof may be approaching replacement territory depending on its material, climate, and installation.

An original HVAC system may already have been replaced—or may be living on borrowed time.

Water heaters, appliances, exterior finishes, windows, plumbing fixtures, and other components have all accumulated two decades of use.

A house does not need to look historic to begin producing an aging-home repair bill.

Even as the remodeling boom cools, Americans continue spending enormous amounts maintaining and improving their homes.

Harvard's latest Leading Indicator of Remodeling Activity projects approximately $519 billion in annual owner-occupied improvement and repair spending by mid-2027.

Growth is expected to slow substantially.

Spending itself is not disappearing.

That distinction makes sense when you consider the age of the housing stock.

A homeowner may postpone a kitchen remodel.

They may delay finishing the basement.

They may decide the outdoor kitchen can wait another year.

A leaking roof has a different timetable.

So does a failed air conditioner in August.

Or a deteriorating sewer line.

Or unsafe electrical work.

Part of the remodeling market is discretionary.

Part of it is simply the cost of keeping tens of millions of aging structures in service.

This deserves emphasis.

An older home is not automatically a bad home.

Age alone tells you remarkably little about condition.

A 70-year-old property that has received consistent reinvestment may be in better physical condition than a 20-year-old property that has been neglected.

Important systems may already have been updated.

A roof may be new.

Electrical may have been modernized.

Plumbing may have been replaced.

Windows may have been upgraded.

HVAC may be recent.

The exterior may have been maintained properly for decades.

Meanwhile, a much newer home can develop expensive problems if maintenance has been deferred or construction defects were never addressed.

So the useful question is not:

It is:

That is a very different conversation.

Age still matters at the population level.

Among owner-occupied homes built before 1960, 5.4% were classified as moderately or severely inadequate under HUD's housing-quality measures in 2023.

Among homes built in 2010 or later, the rate was only 1.3%.

The inadequacy measure is not describing dated countertops.

It refers to meaningful deficiencies such as serious plumbing, electrical or heating problems, water leaks, structural issues, holes in floors, and other conditions affecting basic habitability.

A separate 2025 analysis from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia found that 48% of owner-occupied homes built before 1940 needed at least one repair in 2024.

For homes built in 2000 or later, the figure was 26%.

Estimated repair costs were higher for the older homes too: roughly $5,200 per affected pre-1940 owner-occupied unit, compared with approximately $3,600 for homes built in 2000 or later.

Again, none of that means every old house is falling apart.

It means the probability and cost of repair needs increase as the housing stock ages.

The Philadelphia Fed estimated that addressing reported repair needs across all occupied U.S. housing would have cost approximately $198.4 billion in 2024.

That includes owner-occupied and rental housing.

And lower-income households carried a disproportionate share of that burden: they occupied about 29% of units but accounted for 37.6% of estimated repair costs.

That creates one of the harder housing contradictions.

Some of the households most likely to rely on older housing because it offers a more attainable purchase price are also among the households least able to absorb a sudden five-figure repair.

The inexpensive house can therefore come with a different kind of affordability challenge.

Not simply:

Can I buy it?

But:

Can I own it when something breaks?

This is particularly relevant at the lower end of the market.

Imagine two properties listed for the same price.

One has:

a five-year-old roof,

a recently replaced HVAC system,

updated plumbing,

and newer windows.

The other has:

a 22-year-old roof,

an original air conditioner,

older electrical equipment,

and several deferred exterior repairs.

The mortgage calculation may look nearly identical.

The ownership proposition is not.

That is why the cheapest listing is not necessarily the cheapest home to own.

And it is why affordability increasingly needs to account for the condition and age of major systems alongside the monthly payment.

For a household with limited reserves, a $15,000 repair shortly after closing can matter every bit as much as the mortgage payment that was carefully calculated before the purchase.

One of the characteristics of housing is that many problems do not immediately make a property unusable.

A roof can age without leaking.

An HVAC system can become less efficient while still cooling the house.

Exterior wood can deteriorate gradually.

A window can lose its seal.

A small plumbing leak can persist unnoticed.

A foundation crack can exist for years without changing materially—or become evidence of a larger problem.

That allows maintenance to be postponed.

Sometimes that is perfectly reasonable.

Other times, delay converts a manageable repair into a much more expensive one.

A small roof leak can damage drywall, insulation, framing, or flooring.

Poor drainage can eventually affect a foundation.

A minor plumbing problem can become water damage.

A neglected exterior can allow moisture into the building envelope.

The cost of homeownership therefore does not arrive on one neat monthly statement.

Part of it accumulates quietly inside the physical property.

This may be the most important finding in Harvard's recent analysis.

Among owners of homes built before 1960, households in the highest income quintile spent an average of $12,700 on improvements and repairs in 2023.

Owners in the lowest income quintile spent just $3,400.

That is almost a fourfold dollar difference and roughly three times as much spending by the higher-income group when measured as Harvard presents the comparison.

The homes owned by lower-income households are not somehow immune to aging.

The owners simply have less financial capacity to respond.

That means deferred maintenance is not always a matter of neglect or indifference.

Sometimes it is an affordability problem.

The owner knows the roof is getting old.

They know the windows need work.

They know the HVAC system is struggling.

They also have a mortgage, groceries, insurance, property taxes, utilities, medical expenses, transportation, and every other household bill.

Something gets postponed.

Across millions of homes, those individual decisions become a national housing-quality issue.

This matters for real estate professionals because the physical condition of entry-level inventory can change the market response.

A home may technically fall inside a buyer's target price range.

Then the buyer sees:

the roof,

the electrical panel,

the old HVAC,

the windows,

the evidence of deferred maintenance,

or the inspection report.

Suddenly the question is not merely whether the buyer likes the house.

It is whether they are comfortable inheriting the property's next replacement cycle.

That can affect:

showing activity,

offers,

inspection negotiations,

insurance availability,

appraisals in some circumstances,

buyer confidence,

and the seller's eventual net.

Again, an older property is not automatically problematic.

But when significant systems are visibly approaching replacement, the buyer's calculation changes.

Owners can live with a home's gradual aging for years.

Selling can compress those years of deferred decisions into a very short period.

A seller may suddenly be hearing about:

peeling exterior paint,

a roof nearing the end of its useful life,

an aging HVAC system,

a leaking fixture,

a broken window seal,

an electrical issue,

or a safety concern.

Some of those items may have barely registered during daily life.

Now they appear in:

pre-listing conversations,

buyer feedback,

inspection reports,

insurance questions,

or negotiations.

That is one reason property preparation is not simply a cosmetic exercise.

The new light fixtures and fresh paint may help presentation.

But an expensive underlying system can dominate the buyer's attention once it becomes visible.

The word updated appears constantly in real estate marketing.

Updated kitchen.

Updated bathrooms.

Updated flooring.

Those are useful features.

But for an aging national housing stock, buyers may increasingly care about another kind of update:

updated roof,

updated electrical,

updated plumbing,

updated HVAC,

updated windows,

updated insulation,

updated sewer or septic components where applicable.

A beautiful kitchen answers:

A recently replaced roof answers:

Those are both meaningful forms of value.

They simply appeal to different parts of the buyer's decision.

On Monday, we looked at how the entry-level market remains roughly 300,000 sub-$350,000 listings below its pre-pandemic inventory level.

That is a quantity problem.

Today's aging-stock data add a quality and condition dimension.

The buyer does not merely need:

a home at the right price.

They need:

a home at the right price whose condition they can live with and whose ownership costs they can absorb.

That becomes increasingly important as the nation's inventory ages.

More older homes can help preserve attainable housing because older properties often sell below comparable new construction.

But preserving that affordability requires maintaining the physical structure.

If enough repair needs accumulate, the relatively affordable house can become expensive in a different way.

It is easy to imagine solving this by simply building newer homes.

New construction is essential.

But the scale of the existing housing stock makes replacement unrealistic.

The overwhelming majority of Americans live in homes that already exist.

Even a strong year of homebuilding adds only a fraction to the total inventory.

So most of the houses standing today will still be part of the housing market years from now.

The 1980s home does not disappear when builders complete a new subdivision.

The 1950s ranch does not vanish.

The 1920s bungalow does not vanish.

They continue changing hands.

That means maintenance and preservation are not side issues to the national housing shortage.

They are part of how the country keeps its existing supply usable.

There is another side worth remembering.

Older housing frequently comes with characteristics buyers value:

established neighborhoods,

larger lots,

mature landscaping,

central locations,

architectural character,

walkability,

proximity to employment,

and price points below nearby new construction.

In many communities, the older housing stock is the attainable housing stock.

That makes condition even more important.

The goal is not to steer buyers away from older homes.

It is to understand that the age of the structure changes what needs to be evaluated.

A 1950 home and a 2024 home can both be excellent purchases.

They simply present different questions.

The national median is 44 years.

Your market may look nothing like it.

A fast-growth Sun Belt suburb may be dominated by homes built after 2000.

An established Northeastern neighborhood may contain large concentrations of prewar housing.

A Western metro may have entire neighborhoods built during the 1950s through 1970s.

A rural market may combine very old houses with newer manufactured housing.

That local age profile affects what agents repeatedly encounter.

If most homes in your farm area were built in the same decade, major systems may begin reaching replacement cycles at roughly the same time.

That can influence:

buyer concerns,

inspection findings,

contractor demand,

insurance questions,

seller preparation,

and which improvements buyers actually value.

Knowing the vintage of the local housing stock is therefore more useful than treating "old house" as one generic category.

One of the most revealing differences in Harvard's research is not simply how much older homeowners spend.

It is where the money goes.

Newer homes see a larger share of spending directed toward things like landscaping, fencing, recreational structures, room additions, and other discretionary improvements.

Older homes devote more spending toward keeping systems and components functioning.

That is a transition agents can recognize in the field.

The owner of a newer home may be deciding:

The owner of an older home may be deciding:

Same broad category of "home improvement."

Completely different motivation.

Housing coverage usually focuses on the variables that change every week or month:

mortgage rates,

prices,

inventory,

sales,

new construction,

and affordability.

The age of the home barely moves from one report to the next.

That makes it easy to overlook.

But slowly moving variables can become enormously important.

America's median home has aged from 28 years to 44 years in three decades.

One in four homeowners now lives in a house built before 1960.

Older-home owners spend more keeping their properties operating.

Older homes are more likely to have documented repair needs.

And lower-income owners—many of whom rely disproportionately on older housing—have the least room in their budgets to address those needs.

None of this means America's old houses are suddenly failing.

It means maintaining them is becoming a larger economic requirement.

Buyers naturally focus on what a house costs to acquire.

Sellers naturally focus on what it may sell for.

But every physical property has another side to the equation:

what it will require to remain a good house.

For a newer home, that bill may be modest for years.

For an older home, some major components may already be on their second or third replacement cycle.

That does not make one inherently better than the other.

It makes the history of the property increasingly important.

As America's housing stock gets older, the market will have to pay more attention not just to how many homes exist, but to how well those homes have been maintained.

Because preserving housing supply does not end when a home is built.

Sometimes the real work begins 20, 40, or 70 years later.

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