New data seems to lend support to the idea that the economy is going in opposite directions at the same time, depending on where you sit in it. Wednesday’s K-shape reference is brought to you by the housing sector, where first-time homebuyers are having a rougher go than those who’ve been to this particular rodeo before. 

A new report from the National Association of Realtors finds that of everyone who bought homes over the last year, only about 1 in 5 were first-timers — a record low. The average age of first-time buyers is 40, a record high. 

Susan Cioffi, a real estate agent near Tampa, Florida, said these days, more of her home buyers are familiar faces. “I’m actually seeing repeat customers either upgrading or getting something smaller,” she said.

Cioffi said those repeat customers have a big advantage.

“They have a lot of equity in their house,” she said, which they can cash out and put toward their next house.

Would-be first-time buyers don’t have that luxury, Cioffi said. “A lot of them are either renting or moving back with their parents.”

Moving back home is a nationwide trend, said Jessica Lautz, deputy chief economist of the National Association of Realtors. “The share of first-time home buyers has essentially been cut in half from the historical norm,” she said.

Lautz said that’s partly because of factors within the housing market — like a lack of affordable inventory and elevated mortgage rates. But there’s also everything else.

“Like high rent, student loan debt, childcare costs, they all add up and it makes it hard to save,” she said.

A 10-year delay on home ownership has real financial impact, said Lautz. “It translates into about $150,000 of lost housing wealth gains.”

Lautz said she has seen some people getting creative in how they buy their first home.

“We have seen in the last couple of years the idea of purchasing with a roommate become more popular, even purchasing as a multi-generational family. So you can have cost savings, pooling those funds together,” she said.

Other would-be buyers are simply waiting for mortgage rates to drop, says Tiffany Russell, a real estate agent in Austin, Texas.

“But this will catch them, you know, in the end, because when they get back into that buyer pool, when the rates go down, then they’re going to have a lot more competition with the other first time buyers” she said.

Russell said it’s basically a choice between higher rates today, or potentially higher housing prices down the line.

Susan Wachter, a professor of real estate and finance at the University of Pennsylvania, said there are two ways out of this mess: “If mortgage rates came down significantly into the 5% range, that would be a big help. In addition, we simply have to increase the supply of housing.”

Particularly, she said, of entry-level housing, for people who aren’t already sitting on a pile of equity.