A lot has been said about the millennial generation and the housing market. CoreLogic recently finished a two-part series in which they looked into younger buyers and first time homebuyers and their habits. In addition, the National Association of Realtors recently published their results for Home Buyer and Seller Generational Trends survey. Their findings are promising.
Freddie Mac Vice President Danny Gardner says that given current housing market conditions, “Millennials and other new households should be camping out at open houses.” He cites record low interest rates, growing stability of housing markets, and that the millennial generation and growing immigrant communities are expected to produce about 1.2 million new households in each of the next ten years. Yet first-time homebuyers made up only 32 percent of primary homebuyers last year compared to an average of 40 percent in the years before the housing crisis.
Because a lot of this starts with the buyer, the pressure is on the backs of real estate agents. Freddie Mac has empowered real estate agents with the Real Estate Professionals Resource Center, which helps demystify programs for their customers and provide options for down payments and affordable mortgages.
“But millennials are finally beginning to buy. NAR’s survey found that, for the third straight year, millennials comprised the largest group of recent buyers–35 percent of all buyers compared to 32 percent in 2014,” Gardner said. “It also found that the generation is beginning to follow the pattern of earlier groups, moving to the suburbs and buying single family homes. Between the 2015 and 2016 surveys the share of millennials buying in an urban or central city area decreased from 21 percent to 17 percent and the share of those buying in a multi-unit building dropped by five percentage points to 10 percent.”
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