The question I have gotten from recent interviewers, more than any other, is this: What do you tell homebuyers who feel that they’ll never be able to buy a home?
If you have half a heart, you will be moved by that question. I know that I have been. It’s not that I didn’t know that question was coming, either. I was inspired to answer it when I wrote my book, The Pursuit of Home. Because many, many people in their 20s and 30s and beyond believe that homebuying is an impossibility.
The statistics are pretty bad. The average age of a homebuyer in 2025 has risen to nearly forty. Forty! The median age? Fifty six. If you look back to 1981, nearly 45 years ago, that median age was 31. Pew reports that the percentage of adults 18-34 living with their parents is 18%, and rises in some communities to 33%. Other reports claim that number is as high as 40%, even more employed Americans. How old were your parents when they bought their first home? Odds are that it wasn’t at forty. Need I say it? Something is broken.
How To Respond
What are effective responses to this problem? Believing that you can alter the market forces of supply and demand won’t cut it. Complaining isn’t a viable strategy, either, nor is legislating against some boogieman who is making property more expensive.
Some would say, as would I, that the most effective answer to affordability in any real estate market is to increase the amount of housing, or at least to create the conditions for builders to be able to do their job. That’s certainly part of the solution.
New Yorkers are about to test an altogether different experiment, however: (1) Elect a Socialist mayor and (2) keep a dysfunctional city council in office. (3) Enact further policies that discourage development, (4) incentivize landlords to hold their rent-regulated properties from the market, and (5) inadvertently force tenants to pile into fewer and fewer market rate units. Will this result in affordability? I’ll spare you the suspense. You’ll hear in a year that rents are at new historic highs. Zohran Mamdani spouts old ideas that have already been tried, and have already failed. Those who expect a new result by doing the same thing could be called insane.
I might point out that exactly zero people have ever moved to New York in its 400-year history because it was “affordable.” They move here because of the people, the opportunity, the energy, the possibility that something great will happen to you, and to your life by being here. They move here because it is amazing in some ineffable way. One might say that looking to New York for the solution to the affordability crisis, then, is like looking to a teenager for the solution to cleaning up trash.
Changing human nature is a lost cause. We all want something for nothing. We all want shortcuts. We all fall prey to confirmation bias. We all make decisions that run against our own best interests. This has been covered extensively in books like Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman.
Some may say that wishful thinking is another negative character trait of humans we should do away with. But it is in that desire to discover a new way forward, not in a recycling of bad ideas, that there could be a breakthrough—a paradigm shift.
New Solutions
Albert Einstein once said, “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” The affordability crisis is a problem of our own creation. And it will be a crisis, or failure, of imagination that keeps your dreams unattainable in New York, or anywhere. We must think bigger. We must have new thinking.
I’ve seen inventive practical solutions in the wild, such as those proposed by my recent podcast guest, California Realtor® David Sidoni. His provocative teaching on his How to Buy a Home Podcast includes what he calls the “rent replacement program.” Not only does he claim that this will be you “last lease ever,” but he backs it up with data: Sidoni can boast that 72% of those who follow his program find and close on a home within 3.2 months. He also shared a staggering number: 4600, which is the number of people he has helped to find a home in less than twenty years in the business. He is thinking outside the box. Listen to the episode. It’s full of exciting oddball ideas and frankly, a call to effective action for prospective homebuyers. It’s an inspiration.
A New New York
Speaking of inspiration, there are few places that inspire, or cause as much aspirational yearning, as the real estate market where I work. My proven approach, which I call The Magnetic Method™, is grounded in that inspiration, and rooted in creativity. It’s also a counterintuitive approach that has helped me serve thousands of clients, and sell over $2 Billion in real estate. It works. But how does it work?
I’ll tell you where it starts: It puts the power back in homebuyers’ hands, in your hands. It stops looking at why you can’t do it. It short circuits the notion that someone or something else is to blame for not having found a new home. It’s an approach that forces you to take responsibility for your life and your future. Decide that you can find a home that you love. Believe deeply that it’s going to happen. Draft an inspiring vision that gets you off the couch and into action. Lean on a supportive, highly competent team that builds your trust and belief, understands you on a deeper level and brings it all together.
It’s an encouraging message, to be sure. It’s a message that you won’t be hearing in the hallways of Gracie Mansion or City Hall. But it’s the one that, if nothing else, will solve your housing crisis.
Scott Harris is a veteran real estate agent and founder of Magnetic, a boutique brokerage firm in Manhattan with over $2 billion of sales under his belt. He is also the nationally bestselling author of The Pursuit of Home: A Real Estate Guide to Achieving the American Dream, available in stores now. Buy it here or wherever you shop for books.
