The Columbus starter home has vanished, some say. Others say it just evolved
A few years after leaving Columbus for Chicago, Freda Owusu returned home ready to put down roots.
At 40 years old and earning just under six figures, the lifelong renter figured buying her first house would be fairly simple. Instead, she found herself struggling to find any type of starter home under $265,000 in the city she thought she knew.
"Only three-and-a-half years had passed, and I was expecting the same prices as before I left," she said. "That wasn't the case at all. It was like everything had doubled."
Owusu is one of countless first-time homebuyers across the region and country who have found that the entry into homeownership is no longer the routine rite of passage it was for generations past, leading her to even doubt whether she should stop renting. Last year, the national median buyer age increased to a record 59 years old, and first-time buyers made up the lowest share of the country's market since the National Association of Realtors began collecting data in 1981 at 21%.
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