Why Homeowners Are Staying Put Longer
The typical US homeowner held onto their house for 12 years as of 2025, according to Redfin, the longest median tenure the company has recorded since 2020. NAR’s 2025 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers, as reported, tells a matching story from the selling side: the median time a homeowner stayed in a home before selling reached 11 years, a record high, and today’s buyers expect to stay even longer, a median 15 years, with 28% describing their purchase as a "forever home."
Both figures point the same direction. Rate-locked owners with a mortgage well below current market rates have less financial incentive to sell and buy again, and that lock-in effect shows up directly in how long a typical owner now stays put before the next move.
Metro Tenure: Los Angeles’s 20 Years vs. Louisville’s 8
Tenure length is not uniform across the country. Redfin’s data shows Los Angeles homeowners holding on the longest at 20.0 years, followed by San Jose at 18.7 years, both high-cost West Coast metros where the gap between a locked-in mortgage rate and a new one is largest. Louisville sits at the opposite end with the shortest tenure in Redfin’s data at just 8.3 years, a market with comparatively less lock-in pressure keeping owners in place.
For a wholesaler, that spread is a targeting signal in itself. A long-tenure metro is a metro where a larger share of the owner base has built up substantial equity simply by staying put, exactly the kind of owner who can afford to sell for less than full retail and still walk away with real proceeds, a qualifying detail that a trained VA raises on the initial call and an in-house SDR then confirms before treating the seller as a qualified lead, rather than assuming from a list.
The Numbers
The typical US homeowner held onto their house for 12 years as of 2025, the longest median tenure since 2020.
Redfin, "The Typical U.S. Homeowner Hangs Onto Their House for 12 Years"
Los Angeles homeowners hold the longest at 20.0 years and San Jose homeowners at 18.7 years; Louisville has the shortest tenure at 8.3 years.
Redfin, "The Typical U.S. Homeowner Hangs Onto Their House for 12 Years"
NAR’s 2025 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers, as reported, found the median time a homeowner stayed in a home before selling reached 11 years, a record high, with median expected tenure among current buyers now 15 years and 28% calling their purchase a "forever home."
Sources
The external data in this article draws on the sources below. Figures described in the text as estimates or industry triangulations are directional and are not attributed to a single dataset.
- Redfin, "The Typical U.S. Homeowner Hangs Onto Their House for 12 Years"
- NAR, 2025 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers, as reported