Trending Thursday: Millennials, millennials, CFPB, millennials
June 11, 2015
Brena Swanson
CFPBHousingMillenialsTrending Thursday
After an hour discussing the ins and outs of Millennials with housing’s top economists at the Housing Policy Council at the Financial Services Roundtable, the one fact that everyone agreed on was that millennials are buying and want to buy.
Yes, there are roadblocks to Millennials jumping into housing right now, but this is often translated to “Oh no! Millennials are not buying and all the work that has gone into the economic recovery is going to come to a screeching halt.”
Wrong.
As Nela Richardson, chief economist at Redfin, so eloquently said in the panel, millennials, unlike other generations, are willing to wait on the sidelines until a house comes up that they truly love.
And the millennial talk doesn’t end there.
An article in the Wall Street Journal took off due to the points it made on the rental market, making the bold claim that the future ahead doesn’t look too bright, with more people renting and fewer affordable homes becoming available.
The WSJ articles cites research from the Urban Institute that predicts that more than 3 in 4 new households with decade, and 7 of 8 the next, will be formed by minorities. These new households—nearly half of which will be Hispanic—have lower incomes, less wealth and lower homeownership rates than the U.S. average.
Here’s where millennials come back into the picture.
While they are now the largest generation and can help housing, they probably won’t give it the hydro boost needed. Housing construction is sure to rise as the millennial generation, about 75 million Americans born between 1981 and 1997,comes of age and leaves the nest. But Laurie Goodman, one of the Urban Institute researchers, says these households have less wealth than previous generations.