A few weeks ago, Ryan Serhant, founder and CEO of SERHANT and star of Netflix's Owning Manhattan, posted a video with a line that spread fast: the starter home is dead. Credit to Ryan for the framing and for pulling together the data that backs it up. I want to build on his point, because I do not think he went far enough in one direction. He looked at what this means for buyers who cannot get on the ladder. I want to look at what it means for the people who already own the rungs, meaning owners and operators of rental property like me.
The data Ryan pointed to
Ryan's core numbers are worth restating because they explain everything that follows. The National Association of Realtors found that first time buyers now make up just 21% of homebuyers, the lowest share recorded since tracking began in 1981. Before the 2008 financial crisis, that number was closer to 40%.
The median first time buyer is now 40 years old. In the 1980s, that buyer was typically in their late twenties. We have added more than a decade to the path into homeownership.
Then there is the mortgage lock in effect. Millions of homeowners refinanced or bought when rates were near 3%. Rates then climbed above 6%. Selling and buying again now means trading a cheap loan for an expensive one, so a huge number of owners simply are not moving. Federal Reserve research tied to this found that rate lock in explained 44% of the drop in borrower mobility from 2021 to 2022, and Harvard research found that a 1 percentage point drop in a homeowner's rate can cut the odds of a move by 42%.
Add the supply problem on top. Freddie Mac puts the national housing shortfall at roughly 3.7 million units relative to long term demand. Harvard's 2026 State of the Nation's Housing report shows existing home prices are 54% above where they were in 2020, and the monthly payment on a median priced home has jumped from about $1,700 in early 2020 to roughly $3,100 in late 2025. The income needed to support that payment went from about $66,000 to more than $120,000.
Ryan is right that lower mortgage rates alone will not fix this. If rates drop without new supply, more buyers chase the same number of homes and prices simply rise to absorb the extra purchasing power.
Why this is actually good news if you own rental property
Here is where I want to add my own lens as someone who has spent the last several years raising capital and acquiring multifamily properties across Kentucky, Ohio, New Jersey, and Florida through WE Capital.
Every one of the trends Ryan described points in the same direction for anyone who owns rental housing. Fewer first time buyers means a larger, and older, pool of renters staying renters for longer. A 40 year old renter who cannot yet afford to buy is not a temporary tenant waiting to leave in a year or two. That person is often established in a job, has real income, and is looking for stability, which is exactly the kind of resident who signs longer leases and takes better care of a unit.
Mortgage rate lock in works in our favor too, just from the other side of the transaction. When existing homeowners refuse to sell because they do not want to give up a 3% rate, that inventory never reaches the resale market. The households who would have bought those homes stay in the rental pool instead. Every locked in homeowner is, indirectly, keeping a renter in place somewhere else in the system.
Then there is the supply shortfall itself. A national shortage of 3.7 million units does not resolve overnight, and construction has actually slowed. Single family housing starts fell 7% in 2025 according to Harvard's data. When new supply lags demand this badly, occupancy and rents on existing multifamily assets tend to hold up, because the alternative for a displaced renter is not a starter home. It is another rental unit.
What this means if you are thinking about investing in multifamily
I look at the numbers Ryan raised and I see a thesis that supports exactly what WE Capital has been doing. When the income needed to buy a starter home in a major metro area is $166,000, as Redfin estimated for New York, or $183,000 for Los Angeles, or $247,000 for Anaheim, against median incomes that are a fraction of that, you are not looking at a temporary affordability dip. You are looking at a structural shift that keeps demand for well managed rental housing strong for years, not quarters.
That is precisely why our funds, including the Goethals Capital Fund and the WE Capital Mortgage Fund, focus on acquiring and improving multifamily properties in markets where the gap between renting and owning is wide and growing. When a starter home stops functioning as a starter home, rental housing has to absorb the households that home would have served. That is not a side effect of the housing crisis. For a rental property owner, that is the opportunity inside it.
The real question for investors
Ryan closed his piece asking who is going to build the starter home of 2030. It is a fair question for builders and policymakers. My question is a little different.
If millions of households are going to spend years, maybe a decade or more, renting before they can buy, who is going to own and operate the housing they live in during that stretch, and who is going to do it well?
That is the opportunity I see in this data, and it is the opportunity we are building toward at WE Capital.
Attribution: The statistics and original framing referenced in this article, including the phrase "the starter home is dead," come from a LinkedIn post by Ryan Serhant, founder and CEO of SERHANT, published September 14, 2026. This piece offers my own analysis and perspective as a multifamily real estate investor and does not reproduce his original writing.