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The DeskToday

NAR puts first-time buyers at 29% of sales and FHFA's data puts them at 54.8% of purchase mortgages

Both figures are correct. FHFA counts only financed purchases, and cash buyers, who are 26% of transactions and almost never first-timers, never enter its denominator. Which number describes a coordinator's file mix depends on whether the desk takes cash deals.

TC Bulletin Staff7 min readRead as markdown

What this story establishes

  • NAR's July 2026 report put first-time buyers at 29% of existing-home transactions, down from 33% in June and up from 28% a year earlier.
  • FHFA's National Mortgage Database records first-time buyers at 54.8% of home purchase mortgage originations across the first nine months of 2025, the most recent data available.
  • The gap is definitional. NMDB counts mortgages, so the 26% of transactions NAR records as cash sales are absent from its denominator, and cash buyers are disproportionately repeat buyers and investors.
  • The definitions differ as well. NMDB flags a loan as first-time buyer when credit records show no prior mortgage for any borrower on it. NAR's share comes from its REALTORS Confidence Index survey of agents.
  • The NMDB share has risen every year but two since 2015, from 46.9% to 54.8%, which is a slower and steadier signal than either month-to-month figure.

A coordinator deciding how much hand-holding next quarter needs has a reasonable question: what share of incoming files will be first-time buyers. Two authoritative sources answer it, and they are 26 percentage points apart.

The National Association of REALTORS reported on 11 August 2026 that first-time buyers accounted for 29% of July's existing-home sales, down from 33% in June and up from 28% in July 2025. FHFA's National Mortgage Database, which TC Bulletin read directly, records first-time homebuyer loans at 54.8% of home purchase originations across January to September 2025.

Why the two numbers differ

NMDB is built from mortgages. It draws on a five percent sample of first-lien, closed-end mortgages reported to one of three major credit bureaus, so a transaction that involves no mortgage is invisible to it. NAR put cash sales at 26% of transactions in the same July report.

Those cash buyers are not a random quarter of the market. NAR recorded individual investors or second-home buyers at 14% of July transactions, and investor purchases skew heavily toward cash. Removing cash transactions removes a group made up largely of repeat buyers, which raises the first-time share of everything left.

The definitions differ too. FHFA's technical notes state that first-time status is determined 'by reviewing the credit data of every borrower for prior mortgages. When no prior mortgage is found for the borrower, that borrower is defined as a first-time homebuyer. If any borrower associated with a loan is a first-time homebuyer, that loan is defined as a first-time homebuyer loan.' A couple where one partner has owned before and the other has not produces a first-time buyer loan in NMDB. NAR's figure comes from its REALTORS Confidence Index, a monthly survey of agents reporting on their own closed transactions.

The trend both agree on

Month-to-month movement in either series is noisy. NAR's share moved four points between June and July 2026 alone. The NMDB annual averages, computed by TC Bulletin from the monthly national file, move slowly and in one direction.

The financed purchase market has shifted by roughly eight percentage points toward first-time buyers in a decade. Affordability moved sharply against buyers over the same period, so the shift is unlikely to reflect first-timers finding it easier. The more probable reading is that repeat buyers with low fixed rates stopped moving, which shrinks the repeat side of the denominator.

Which figure applies to a given desk

  1. A desk that works financed purchases only, which describes most coordinators supporting buyer-side agents, sits closer to the NMDB figure. Expect roughly half of files to involve a first-time buyer.
  2. A desk with heavy investor, second-home or luxury exposure sits closer to the NAR figure, because the cash share of those segments is high and cash buyers are rarely first-timers.
  3. A desk working international or all-cash markets should note that TC Bulletin's earlier reporting put foreign buyers at 48% all cash in NAR's 2026 survey. Those files are almost entirely outside the NMDB measurement.
  4. Whichever applies, the operational consequence is the same: first-time buyer files carry more explanation, more document chasing and more questions per file than repeat-buyer files, and a desk pricing per file rather than per hour absorbs that difference.