Why Are People Waiting to Buy Homes?



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One thing we know for certain about the real estate market is that it is never going to stay the same for long. Today we want to talk about an interesting trend we’ve notcied in real estate: millennials are waiting longer to purchase their first homes than their parents did.

The typical first-time buyer now rents for an average of 6 years before buying a home, which is up from 2.6 years in the early 1970’s, according to Zillow.

We came across a great article on the topic from MSNBC. If you’d like to read the full story, click here. To save you some time, I will give you my three biggest takeaways from the article.



1. Down payments are a huge factor

Renters in today’s market are struggling to save for down payments and qualify for mortgages. Most first-time buyers still depend on personal savings for at least some of their down payments, but rising rental prices have complicated the task of socking away money for a down payment.

2. Rising rental rates are complicating things as well

 Rental rates are causing 46% of renters aged 25-354, to spend more than 30 percent of their incomes on rent, up from 40 percent a decade earlier.

3. Job security is important to millennial buyers
 The Money Source, a mortgage lender, examined applications from 5,404 millennial buyers and found that these buyers averaged nearly 4.5 years in their field of work and had held their current job for slightly m
ore than three years. Those figures point to how critical career stability is to a younger generation.