May 24, 2019
What Millennials Look for in a Housing Market
Perhaps you’ve noticed that the Millennial generation is a hot topic in the market-oriented press. Many articles have declared that this generation is “killing” sectors of the economy by bucking the buying trends of previous generations. Often they seem to be cast as doing so willingly, as if to spite those who have come before—rather than as being travelers on a tide of technological and economic innovations and stressors over which they have only just recently begun to gain control. The housing sector has not avoided this focus—as Millennials have been peered at as oddities for their slowness in becoming buyers, and for their reticence to start moving to the suburbs.
But recently the press has begun to change—as Millennials have started to join the ranks of their predecessors in becoming power-purchasers in the housing market.
Still, they do have their peculiarities in what they look for in a housing market as compared to their forebears. In a Generational Propensity Report produced by Realtor.com, that organization looked back at 2018 to assess the trends in purchasing by the various generations populating America at the present moment, and Millennials were a set apart.
While the majority of Millennial purchasers continue to seek out starter homes—a symptom of this set’s slowness to become buyers (for various reasons, not least among them their overall staggering educational debt)—the data indicates that they are swiftly increasing their average cost of purchase, indicating a rise in buying power. Moreover, they have at last become the generation producing the largest number of mortgage loan originations, taking nearly half of all of the loans issued in the latter half of 2018, compared to Gen X’s 36 percent and the Boomer Generation’s 17 percent.
Still, affordability is an important factor in those homes Millennials are willing to buy, which is why they still tend to make smaller down payments than their forebears, and explains why the top market areas for Millennials are job-rich and plentiful in housing availability. The top five areas where Millennials purchased homes in 2018?: Buffalo, NY; Pittsburgh, PA; Milwaukee, WI; Cincinnati, OH; and Columbus, OH. Meanwhile, our own service area of Boston-Cambridge, MA, came in at number seven—proving that some places just never lose their appeal.
At Topouzis & Associates, P.C., we are experts at ferreting out and disposing with problems that may occur with property title in advance of closing. We take pride in the great amount and quality of experience we bring to the closing table in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Florida. Contact us if you’re a Millennial and you want a partner in your property closing—one who makes everyone involved feel like family.
