Despite dramatic increases in home prices and mortgage rates, first-time home buyers now make up 50% of the market. It’s the highest percentage ever recorded by the real estate web site Zillow.

In 2022, first-time home buyers made up 45% of the market. In 2021, they accounted for 37%.

“High mortgage rates and a shortage of inventory is keeping would-be repeat buyers in their current homes,” Zillow senior population scientist Manny Garcia said in a statement. “A greater relative share of first-time buyers is filling the gap, and they’re competing against each other for the limited number of affordable starter homes on the market.”

The rise of first-time buyers is part of what’s keeping home prices high, despite mortgage rates topping 7% for the first time in more than two decades. The median existing-home home price in July was $406,700 — up 1.9% compared with a year earlier.

The majority of existing homeowners have mortgages rates below 5% and are half as likely to consider moving, according to the 2023 Consumer Housing Trends Report Zillow released Wednesday. The number of homes available for sale in July was 44% lower than in 2019. Monthly mortgage payments have more than doubled over the same time frame.

It now takes almost 12 years for a first-time buyer to save up for a down payment compared with nine years before the pandemic. Zillow found that 60% of first-time buyers are using at least two funding sources to afford their down payments — usually a combination of savings and a gift from family or friends.

Almost half of first-time buyers are millennials between the ages of 29 and 43. One quarter are Gen Z adults between the ages of 18 and 28.