The average Millennial homebuyer just turned 30. According to Ellie Mae's latest Millennial Tracker survey, the average age of a Millennial homebuyer rose from 29.5 in March 2017 to 30.1 in March of this year.
Ellie Mae points to the compression of inventory largely due to Baby Boomers aging in place instead of relocating and retiring as the reason for the average age of the Millennial homebuyer to creep up into the 30s.
So what else does Ellie know about these 30.1-year-olds? For starters, they really like mortgage technology, and they are getting approved in as little as 39 days, the shortest amount of time Ellie Mae has ever recorded for the demographic.
“With the ongoing adoption of digital mortgage solutions, Millennial homebuyers were able to close purchase loans in 39 days in March, the shortest amount of time since Ellie Mae began tracking Millennial loan data in January 2014,” Ellie Mae Executive Vice President of Corporate Strategy Joe Tyrrell said in a statement.
“As more Millennials reach the prime home-buying age of 29 to 32 years old, they are finding a mortgage experience leveraging technology that is fast and engaging in ways that their parents couldn’t imagine when they were buying their first home.”
Another interesting tidbit of data from the report is that Millennials had a significantly higher average loan-to-value ratio than the rest of America’s homebuyers. According to Ellie Mae’s report, Millennials were able to garner an average LTV of 87% whereas all other borrowers’ average LTV was 79%.
Conventional, Federal Housing Administration and Veterans Administration purchase loans all showed increases in the Millennial cohort, with conventional purchase loans up 5% from February, FHA purchase loans up 2% from February and VA purchase loans up a whopping 13% from February.
