Tag Archives: First-Time Homebuyers

Asking prices on for-sale homes jumped 1.5 percent month-over-month in November, outpacing a pre-revised increase of 1.0 percent in October, according to property data firm Trulia. Examining local market data, Trulia found increases were largely split along age lines, with asking prices rising faster in metros predominantly populated by Gen X, baby boomers, and senior Americans compared to those occupied by more millennials.

In a testimony before the Senate Banking Committee's subcommittee on housing, Mabel Guzman, 2014 chair of the National Association of Realtors' (NAR) Conventional Finance and Lending Committee, highlighted some of the biggest challenges constraining homeownership.

Looking at trends in incomes, home values, and rental prices in the third quarter, Zillow estimates that U.S. homeowners spend on average 15.3 percent of their income on monthly mortgage payments. For younger homebuyers, who typically make smaller down payments, that figure is only slightly higher: 17.4 percent.

In a survey of more than 2,000 American adults, 61 percent of renters said they don't plan to purchase a house at any point in the next three years, Freddie Mac said Monday. When asked why they expect to keep renting for the near future, half of respondents said they can't afford to make a down payment for a mortgage, while 38 percent said they can't afford a monthly mortgage payment.

By lowering the down payment down to 3 percent, leaders from the GSEs and the Federal Housing Finance Administration (FHFA) hope to increase homeownership and particularly household formation by offering loans to those who can afford mortgages but lack resources to make a 20 percent down payment plus closing costs.

According to a new index released Wednesday by the American Enterprise Institute's (AEI) International Center on Housing Risk, an estimated 46 percent of mortgages made from October 2013 through October 2014 were for first-time homebuyers. Looking only at government-guaranteed loans, that share is closer to 52 percent.

In his 2015 outlook, Zillow's chief economist, Dr. Stan Humphries, predicts millennials will take on a much greater presence in the housing market, overtaking Generation X as the largest group of homebuyers.

The American Enterprise Institute's (AEI) National Mortgage Risk Index for home purchase loans stood at 11.4 percent in October, little changed from the previous three-month average but nearly 1 percentage point above its year-ago level, the group said Monday.

Total existing-home sales in October, including single-family houses, townhomes, condominiums, and co-ops, came in at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.26 million, up 1.5 percent from an upwardly revised estimate of 5.18 million in September, according to transaction data from the National Association of Realtors (NAR).

In a panel at the 2014 Realtors Conference and Expo, experts discussed the changing face of American homebuyers and the potential effects of these changes on the housing market. One of the biggest topics for the panel was the state of millennial homeownership.