Why many Seattle-area millennials can't afford homes
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When young people buy homes, they're often doing it with help from their parents, a new report finds — and a local realtor says the Seattle area is no exception.
Why it matters: Nearly three-quarters of aspiring homebuyers say affordability is the No. 1 obstacle to owning a house, per a Bankrate study.
Plus: A Redfin report on "nepo-homebuyers" found 38% of recent buyers under age 30 received family money in order to afford their down payment.
Zoom in: Among U.S. millennials (ages 27 to 42) who don't already own a home, 44% said not having enough income was their No. 1 barrier to buying, per the Bankrate study.
- The next biggest obstacles they identified were down payment and closing costs (43%) and high home prices (42%).
What's happening: Fewer millennials are seeking mortgages this year.
- In the first half of 2022, nearly 52% of LendingTree's mortgage requests across the U.S. came from millennials. In the first half of 2023, that share dropped to roughly 50%.
- In the Seattle area, millennials comprised 60% of local mortgage requests early last year. But that figure fell to roughly 56% in the first half of this year, per LendingTree.
What they're saying: "What we see now is an absolute reliance on parental wealth to purchase homes," John Manning, the managing broker of Re/Max Gateway in Seattle, told Axios. He called that familial assistance "critically important" for many buyers.
- "There's a lot of articles about the trillions of dollars of wealth that will be transferred when the baby boomer generation fades away," he said. "But that wealth is already being re-dispersed in the form of down payments."
The latest: Housing industry groups are urging the Fed to stop raising interest rates.