The American dream of homeownership is evolving in unexpected ways. According to the National Association of REALTORS®’ 2025 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers, today’s first-time homebuyer is, on average, 40 years old — and more often than not, they’re purchasing homes built around 1980, making the property roughly the same age as the buyer. This striking parallel reveals a fundamental truth about the U.S. housing market: We’re not just selling homes; we’re transferring aging infrastructure that will define quality of life and financial stability for decades to come.
The numbers tell a sobering story. According to the 2022 American Community Survey, the median age of America’s owner-occupied housing stock has climbed to 40 years, with more than half of all homes built before 1980. These aren’t just older homes — they’re properties built before modern energy codes, before we understood indoor air quality and before climate resilience became a daily concern. Yet they represent a massive portion of what’s available to buyers today, particularly those entering the market for the first time at a stage of life when financial prudence matters most.
For these buyers, the stakes couldn’t be higher. At 40, first-time homeowners often are balancing multiple financial priorities: saving for retirement, funding children’s education, managing student debt or caring for aging parents. The last thing they need is a home that leaks money through inefficient systems, harbors hidden health hazards or buckles under extreme weather events. Until now, homeowners have been ill-equipped to prevent this from happening to purchases made primarily on curb appeal and location, blind to the performance factors that determine the true cost of ownership.
This information gap has persisted for generations, but it’s particularly problematic now. Climate volatility is increasing operating costs and risks. Energy prices fluctuate unpredictably. Health concerns about indoor air quality have moved from niche interest to mainstream priority. Buyers are asking questions that traditional listing photos and square footage calculations cannot answer: What will my utility bills actually be? Is the air quality safe for my family? Can this home withstand the severe weather we’re seeing more frequently?
The real estate industry has lacked a standardized way to answer these questions — until now.
At Pearl, we recently announced the completion of the Pearl Home Performance Registry, the nation’s first comprehensive performance database of America’s single-family housing stock.
Every one of the nation’s 92 million single-family homes has been modeled and assigned a Pearl SCORE — a rating from 1 to 1,000 that quantifies how well each home performs across five universal factors of home life that are too often overlooked: safety, comfort, operations, resilience and energy (SCORE).
Homebuyers today are making the largest financial decision of their lives with incomplete information. You wouldn’t buy a used car based on looks without knowing how it runs. Yet Americans purchase homes every day with no understanding of how they perform. Pearl SCORE eliminates that information gap by translating complex building science — BTUs, R-values, SEER ratings — into accessible language about monthly costs, health protection and daily comfort.
This transformation comes at a pivotal moment in the real estate market. The industry is shifting to prioritize home performance, driven by buyer demand, climate realities and economic pressures.
Real estate professionals can apply to join Pearl’s Early Access Program and be among the first to leverage Pearl SCORE and the Home Performance Registry to reveal operating costs, safety risks and comfort levels that will help buyers to decide and sellers to showcase their homes. The feedback will shape the tools that will transform real estate, while agents gain exclusive benefits, discounted reports and Pearl-recognized credentials.
As the average first-time homebuyer reaches 40 and confronts properties of equal vintage, the conversation must shift from what homes look like to how they perform. In a market where aging housing stock meets increasingly informed buyers, transparency isn’t just valuable — it’s essential. Pearl SCORE brings that transparency to scale, transforming how America buys and sells homes at exactly the moment the market needs it most.
Cynthia Adams is the CEO and co-founder of Pearl.