U.S. housing trend pressures replacement demand

U.S. homeowners are staying in their houses for the longest time in at least 25 years, largely due to low mortgage rates, new data shows, which has weighed on the replacement market. 

What’s happening: “Sellers at the end of 2025 had owned their homes for an average of 8.6 years — a record in data going back to early 2000, when the average was 4.2 years,” Axios reported Monday, citing findings from industry data provider ATTOM. 

Why it matters: U.S. sales of existing homes — which fell 33 percent from December 2020 to December 2025 — serve as a proxy for replacement demand, with Carrier estimating that such sales result in HVAC system changes “usually” 20 to 25 percent of the time. 

What they’re saying: “The homeowner that’s been waiting to buy a new home is a little bit reluctant to have a full replacement a year or two before they sell their home,” Carrier CEO David Gitlin said on the company’s earnings call last week. “So they may be waiting and limping along with a repair.” 

• “And once they buy the home, they will often negotiate a replacement of the HVAC product as part of the full replacement,” he added. “So that decrease in existing home sales has put probably more pressure on repair versus replace.”

Go deeper: The trend, also driven by high home prices, is happening nationwide, but it’s especially pronounced in coastal and Northeastern metros, “where tenure often exceeds a decade,” according to ATTOM CEO Rob Barker, “while many Sun Belt and Midwest markets continue to see comparatively shorter ownership periods.”

Yes, but: The housing market loosened slightly in the fourth quarter of 2025. “Existing home sales in the United States surged by 5.1% from the previous month to an annualized rate of 4.35 million in December of 2025,” Trading Economics writes, “the sharpest increase in nearly two years.”

• Meanwhile, a January analysis found that for the first time since 2020, the share of U.S. homeowners with mortgage rates of six percent or higher exceeds those with rates below three percent.
• “As existing home sales starts to pick up, which it eventually will, you’ll get back into that replacement cycle,” Gitlin added.