When first-time buyers are this scarce, give more of your time to the clients who already own

By Liv Saville, Head of Growth at Worthington

Repeat & referrals·October 14, 2026·6 min read

NAR's 2025 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers describes a US market split between an all-time high of all-cash buyers and an all-time low of first-time buyers. My view is that a market like that makes the past clients who already own a home the part of your database most worth your attention, and I'd plan your nurturing around them.

NAR's latest profile found all-cash buyers at a record high and first-time buyers at a record low

The National Association of REALTORS® has published its Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers every year since 1981. The 2025 edition is a survey of recent buyers and sellers who completed a transaction between July 2024 and June 2025.

NAR describes that period as one in which the market "continued to show extremely limited housing inventory," and mortgage interest rates averaged 6.69% while the data was being collected. In NAR's words, "as a result of decreased housing affordability and limited housing inventory, potential first-time buyers retreated further from the housing market."

NAR sums up the period this way: "the housing market remains divided between an all-time high of all-cash home buyers and an all-time low of first-time buyers."

I read the split as a market where more of the buyers still moving already own a home

NAR doesn't say who the all-cash buyers were, so what follows is my own reasoning. Paying cash for a home usually takes money that most people starting out don't have, and for many households that money comes from a home they already own. If first-time buyers are at a record low and cash buyers at a record high, I read that as a market where a larger share of the people who can still move are existing owners.

Your past clients are existing owners by definition. They bought through you, and some of them have now owned for long enough that their next move is a real question. I'd treat them as the group in your database best placed to transact in a market that has squeezed out so many first-time buyers.

A second source helps explain why the relationship itself matters here. In a meta-analysis in the Journal of Marketing, Palmatier and colleagues brought together empirical research on relationship marketing and found that its premise, that relationship marketing positively affects performance, is well supported. They also found it more effective when relationships are more critical to customers, with service offerings among their examples, and when the relationship is built with an individual person instead of a selling firm. An agent who helped someone buy a home fits both conditions, in my reading.

There are limits to all of this. NAR's profile surveys US buyers and sellers, and the highlights describe market conditions and buyer mix, not what agents did or which strategies worked. The meta-analysis wasn't about real estate. Applying either to how you spend your nurturing time is my own interpretation, and if you work in Canada, your local market may not look the same.

Plan this quarter's nurturing around past clients first

These are practices I'd suggest, and neither source tested them.

Sort your past clients by how long they've owned. Someone who bought eight years ago is in a different position from someone who bought last spring. Start your outreach with the owners who've been in their homes long enough that a move or a downsize is a fair question, and give recent buyers a lighter rhythm.

Write to them about their home and their plans. A purchase anniversary is a reason a past client will recognize, and it lets you mention what's happened in their neighborhood without sounding like a pitch. Ask how the house is working for them now. If their family has grown or the kids have left, that's the moment they may tell you.

Keep first-time hopefuls in touch without pressing them. NAR's phrase is that potential first-time buyers "retreated further," which tells me the interest hasn't necessarily gone. Agents I've spoken to have said these leads are easy to drop once they go quiet. A short note every couple of months that asks what would need to change for them to buy keeps you in their mind for when affordability shifts, and it doesn't ask them for a decision they can't make yet.

Make it personal to you. Given Palmatier and colleagues' finding about relationships with an individual person, I'd write past client notes in your own words, signed by you, about something you went through together. A newsletter from the brokerage can sit alongside that, and I wouldn't let it replace it.

If you want more on the first step back to someone you haven't spoken to in a while, I've written about why a check-in without a special reason is worth sending. And the case for competing on service with the clients you already have applies here too, and the case for keeping past clients coming back holds in any market.

Knowing which owners are due a note is the hard part across hundreds of contacts

Keeping a steady rhythm with every past client gets harder to sustain while you're working live deals, especially once your list runs into the hundreds. Worthington keeps every past client on a rhythm: after a deal closes, the client rests for a period you set and then comes back as a past client, and each morning's list gives you the people worth a touch that day with a reason you can check, such as a purchase anniversary or simply that it's been too long. Cold leads, including first-time hopefuls who went quiet, are nurtured on their own gap, which you can change, and Worthington also knows when to say nothing at all. He drafts each note in your voice, and nothing goes out until you press Send.

NAR's profile describes a market where the people starting out have stepped back while cash buyers reached a record high. Your past clients already own the home that so many first-time buyers can't reach yet, and the quarter ahead is a good time to show them you haven't forgotten the home you helped them find.

Worthington draws on research like this to shape a nurturing strategy for each of your clients. Join the waitlist