Starter Home & House Poor Hats

In 1991 the median first-time homebuyer in America was 28 years old. In 2026 they are 40, an all-time record, and first-timers now account for just one in five buyers, an all-time low. Home prices are up roughly 50% since 2020 while incomes grew 29%. About 60% of outstanding mortgages carry a rate below 4%, which means the people who already own are not selling, and the starter home, the modest first rung every previous generation used, has largely stopped being built. So the housing conversation has curdled into a genre of humor: the group-chat tour of listings nobody can afford, the down payment that has quietly become a long-term hobby, the homeowner explaining that renting is throwing money away while sitting on a 3% mortgage he would never surrender. These are hats for everyone on the wrong side of that math, plus a couple for the people on the right side of it who will not stop talking about their HOA. Slab serif gives THE STARTER HOME IS EXTINCT its museum-placard finality, loan-application sans states FIRST TIME HOME BUYER AT FORTY as pure fact, and HOUSE POOR gets a reverse arch: streetwear typography for a mortgage that ate everything.