Mortgage

Not all millennials are created equal

Why they move? Where they move?

Millennials are being dissected more intensely than a frog in a high school biology class.

The reasons behind why they move, where they move to and what is stopping them from moving is analyzed, picked through and then reported on to the industry to help cater to what they want.

But as one of two millennials in our editorial department — the other being Ben Lane — it's clear that our lives are drastically different. As Ben's recent blog on the topic stated:

It’s the group that everyone can’t seem to stop talking about. Millennials this. Millennials that. Millennials have taken over.

And the worst offender of all seems to be CNBC. 

First and foremost, all millennials are not alike, no matter how many times CNBC tells me they are.

Look, I understand why millennials are important and why they get talked about. Heck, I’m a millennial myself, although just barely…on the upper end of the scale, I should say.

And we are not the only two in the industry who don’t fit into the box.

The Guardian reporter Jessica Glanza is a millennial, and she and her boyfriend are buying a house.

Based on everything you’ve read, my boyfriend and I are freaks: we’re millennials and we’re trying to buy a house.

As a generation, we’re reputed to put off marriage, live in our parents’ basements, work as baristas and opt to live with our buddies. We don’t have steady jobs. Student loan debt is sucking up our disposable income. The housing bust scared us off. A survey of research by the US Chamber of Commerce found all this. The survey was dead on about my childhood Beanie Baby fascination, but less so with my housing situation.

On the other side, there’s Sara Stevens, the daughter of top housing expert and CEO of the Mortgage Bankers Association David Stevens, who is choosing to forgo buying a home right now.

Stevens, 27, knows interest rates are low, rents are high and owning a home can build wealth. She also had a front-row seat to the worst real-estate slump since the Great Depression.

“The world has changed,” she said.

“We have a younger generation that has sat on the front lines of this housing recession,” said Stevens, 57. “They’re clearly being more thoughtful about it and they’re clearly deferring that decision.”

But this could start to change since the Fed hopes that the housing market recovery will accelerate once employment growth revives and younger adults are more able to get jobs.

Looking at historical trends, the share of adults living with their parents drops sharply after age 24 and continues to fall to 6% by the time people are in their mid-to-late 30s.

“Regardless of the economic setbacks they may have experienced, today’s 20–29 year olds are still likely to follow the same pattern,” a report from the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University said.

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