Housing crisis hits all ages as homeownership declines nationwide

The important second-order effect is that housing is no longer just an affordability story; it is a mobility-tax story. When households across the income spectrum stay put longer, transactions slow, turnover fees vanish, and the entire housing services ecosystem loses volume even if headline prices remain sticky. That is structurally negative for brokerages like DOUG, because the market is not just missing first-time buyers — it is missing the cascade of move-up transactions that normally follow them.

The bigger beneficiary is not necessarily the builders everyone reaches for first, but the replacement-spend complex: renovation, additions, and home-improvement demand get pulled forward as “forever home” behavior intensifies. That shifts wallet share away from agents, lenders, movers, and furnishing retailers tied to existing-home turnover and toward contractors, materials, and repair-oriented retail. If this persists 6–18 months, the earnings gap between transaction-sensitive housing names and capex-at-home names should widen even if broader consumer spending softens.

The macro risk is that this becomes self-reinforcing: weaker turnover reduces comparable sales and keeps appraisals and listing behavior cautious, while lower mobility suppresses labor market flexibility and reinforces wage dispersion by geography. The contrarian point is that affordability can improve faster than bulls expect if price growth stays flat while incomes grind higher, but the base rate of relief is slow enough that rate cuts alone may not re-open the market. The true reversal catalyst is supply normalization at the entry level, which is a multi-year process; absent that, any cyclical bounce in volumes is likely shallow and short-lived.