The reason is very similar to the reason that the residual terms will equal zero. https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/189584 For a simple linear regression (not for OLS in general which we will show later) you have the formula: $$y_i = \hat\alpha + \hat\beta x_{i} + \epsilon_i$$ and for the average this becomes: $$\bar{y_i} = \alpha + \beta \bar{x_{i}} + \bar{\epsilon_i}$$ And the OLS regression with an intercept included will be such that the residual terms $\bar{\epsilon}$ are equal to zero. The reason is that we must have the derivatives of the residual terms equal to zero $$ \frac{\partial}{\partial \hat\alpha} \sum \epsilon_i^2 =0$$ which will lead to $$ \begin{array}{} \frac{\partial}{\partial \hat\alpha} \sum \epsilon_i^2 &=& \frac{\partial}{\partial \alpha} \sum (y_i - \hat\alpha - \hat\beta x_{i})^2\\ &=& \sum -2 \hat\alpha (y_i - \hat\alpha + \hat\beta x_{i})\\ &=& -2 \hat\alpha \sum \epsilon_i &=& 0 \end{array}$$ ---------- ### Intuitively If the line does not go through the point $\bar{x},\bar{y}$ then this will be equivalent to the sum of the errors being unequal to zero, and we will be able to improve the sum of squared residuals $\sum \epsilon_i^2$ by shifting the line up or down. When the line goes through the point $\bar{x},\bar{y}$, then a change of the parameter $\hat{\alpha}$ does not improve the fit (the derivative is zero). [![comparison][1]][1] -------- ### It depends on the point of view The OLS regression curve only passes necessarily through the point $\hat{x},\hat{y}$ when you have *linear* regression. For OLS that is used to express a non-linear function with an intercept term you will still have the situation that the sum of residuals will be equal to zero, but you do not have anymore the relationship $$\bar{y_i} = \alpha + \beta \bar{x_{i}} + \bar{\epsilon_i}$$ An example is a quadratic cuvre [![quadratic fit][2]][2] However, you could express this regression of $y$ with a quadratic curve (which is seemingly a non-linear function) as a linear function of $x$ and $x^2$ by means of viewing it as multivariate linear regression. Then it will *also* pass through the means. $$\bar{y_i} = \alpha + \beta_1 \overline{x_{i}} + \beta_2 \overline{x_{i}^2} + \bar{\epsilon_i}$$ because now you express it as a multidimensional case. [![enter image description here][3]][3] [1]: https://i.sstatic.net/4VACq.png [2]: https://i.sstatic.net/3ppGZ.png [3]: https://i.sstatic.net/4S46D.png