New Report Challenges Assumptions About First-Time Homebuyers in High-Cost Regions

This article is part of The Rooftop, a blog and multimedia series from New America’s Future of Land and Housing program. Featuring insights from experts across diverse fields, the series is a home for bold ideas to improve housing in the United States and globally.

Across high-cost regions like Silicon Valley, housing debates often start from the same assumption: first-time homeownership is simply not realistic in markets where home prices far outpace incomes. When median home prices surpass a million dollars, the idea of helping first-time buyers enter the market can understandably appear impractical or even misguided. 

As a result, policy discussions in these areas center around rental-first strategies, prioritizing production and preservation over ownership pathways. But a new independent evaluation conducted by Learning for Action reveals that Housing Trust Silicon Valley’s first-time homebuyer programs challenge that assumption, showing us that targeted first-time homebuyer assistance can lead to enduring housing stability and long-term wealth creation, even in one of the most expensive housing markets in the country. 

The independent evaluation, conducted by Learning for Action, titled The Power of Home: Outcomes & Insights from 25 Years of Homebuyer Assistance, examined the long-term outcomes of 2,295 households who purchased homes for the first time between 2000 and 2025 with assistance from our organization. The study found that through targeted interventions from eight of our first-time homebuyer programs, the first-time homebuyers generated an estimated $386 million in cumulative household wealth—an average of $169,000 per household—alongside meaningful improvements in financial resilience. Participants, who received up to $250,000 each in loans from Housing Trust, reported stronger credit profiles, increased savings, reduced financial stress, and long-term housing stability. They also expressed greater confidence in navigating housing and real estate decisions, along with greater flexibility to manage life transitions such as caregiving, education, or job changes.

These findings challenge a central assumption in housing policy: that first-time homeownership in high-cost markets is unsustainable. Instead, the evidence suggests that the largest barrier for many households was not sustaining homeownership, it was gaining access to it in the first place.

About the Programs

Housing Trust’s first-time homebuyer programs combine down payment assistance, closing cost support, and homebuyer education to help buyers bridge the gap between what they can afford and what the market requires. 

Just as important is how these programs support buyers beyond the transaction. Through pre-purchase education, one-on-one counseling, and ongoing technical assistance, participants gained the knowledge and confidence necessary to navigate a complex system to acquire and keep their homes for the long-term. 

Many of the evaluation’s findings are reflected in the stories of the homeowners themselves. For some participants, the path to homeownership required years of persistence navigating a complicated system. 

One first-time buyer in San Jose spent months pursuing a below-market-rate homeownership program with limited inventory and resale restrictions, only to be disqualified when eligibility requirements changed. Through Housing Trust’s first-time homebuyer programs, which instead help buyers navigate the open market, she successfully purchased a condominium and credited our organization with helping change her life. Purchasing her first home provided something renters often struggle to secure in high-cost regions: stability and the ability to remain in the community where they grew up. As another homeowner reflected, owning a home created for them “a sense of security and belonging” that extended beyond financial outcomes and wove them more seamlessly into the fabric of family and community life surrounding them. 

Many households said they would not have been able to purchase a home without assistance. For them, the barrier to ownership was not readiness or financial discipline, it was the upfront cost of entering the housing market. Once that barrier of access was addressed, ownership proved achievable.

The Broader Context

Understanding these outcomes requires looking beyond individual households to the systems that support them.

Housing Trust operates as a community development financial institution (CDFI) that aggregates and combines public and private capital to expand access to homeownership and support multifamily housing developments across our region. Rather than functioning as a one-time subsidy provider, we’ve operated as a long-term intermediary in the regional housing finance ecosystem, investing more than $690 million in affordable housing and creating more than 28,700 housing opportunities in the greater Bay Area region since 2000. 

Three structural features helped sustain outcomes over time across our programs: 

• The programs provided consistent support across decades, allowing households to access assistance even as housing markets fluctuated.
• The financing tools were designed to adapt as housing prices increased, shifting from modest closing-cost assistance in earlier years to larger down payment support as affordability gaps widened.
• The model relied on blended public and private capital, enabling programs to persist even as policy environments and funding sources changed.

The result was not a single intervention, but a sustained system designed to help households overcome the initial barrier to ownership.

These outcomes contrast with trends emerging in housing markets nationwide.     

Across the United States, first-time homebuyer participation has declined sharply. The Urban Institute found that those aged 35 to 44 were less likely to be homeowners today than in 1980, concluding that lower-income households in traditional homebuying years are less likely to buy a home than those in past generations. This demonstrates that wealth disparities tied to homeownership are continuing to widen.

The trends also point to a growing problem of access. If the starting assumption in high-cost regions is that first-time homeownership is unrealistic, the evidence from our homeownership programs suggests a more nuanced reality. Approximately 76% of respondents said it would not have been possible to purchase their home without the assistance from Housing Trust, proving that for many households, the challenge was not maintaining homeownership once they purchased a house, it was saving enough money and being equipped with the right tools to purchase their first home. 

For policymakers, practitioners, and investors, Housing Trust’s evaluation shows us what we must do next: invest more intentionally in the solutions we know can help households enter and remain in stable housing today.

In high-cost markets, where the stakes are highest and the challenges most acute, we have an opportunity and a responsibility to build on what works. Prioritizing scaling first-time homebuyer programs that have demonstrated long-term impact, strengthening the capital and partnerships that make them possible, and ensuring they are part of a broader, coordinated housing strategy.

Editor’s note: The views expressed in the articles on The Rooftop are those of the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or policy positions of New America.