As summertime heats up, it’s safe to say that spring has officially come to an end. But while its cooler days may be behind us, data says its uptick in home buying interest is here to stay.
According to a survey from Realtor.com, this spring was filled with home-buying interest, especially from the nation’s first-time buyers.
This group of homebuyers, who often tend to be Millennials, made up 42% of spring’s home-shoppers.
“Based on our user responses, just under half of all home shoppers this spring were searching for their first home, and many of them were aging Millennials likely driven by life events such as moving in with a partner, getting married or starting a family,” Realtor.com writes. “It may come as a surprise to some people that Millennials are looking to small towns or suburbs, but when it comes to buying a home, Millennials aren’t that different than other generations.”
And they really aren’t that different, as the company noted the vast majority of these young shoppers indicated housing affordability was their top concern when purchasing a new home.
In fact, 42% of first-time buyers said they haven’t closed on a home yet because they can’t find a good house within their budget range, according to the survey.
This isn’t really surprising as several reports have indicated that a lack of affordability has kept many first-time buyers from entering the market.
In April, The National Association of Realtors and realtor.com released a survey that showed that housing affordability is now down from 2018 levels, and fewer households can afford the active inventory of homes for sale based on their income.
According to their findings, first-time homebuyers can afford only 20% of housing stock in some of the nation’s housing markets.
“The survey confirms that the lack of entry-level supply is putting affordability pressures on too many buyers – especially those at the lower end of the market, where demand is the strongest,” NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun said. “This is why first-time buyers continue to struggle finding affordable properties to buy and are making up less than a third of home sales so far this year.”
NOTE: Realtor.com’s survey is based on survey data conducted from March and June 2019. The results were based on the responses of visitors to the company’s website and were weighted by age group to reflect overall web traffic to real estate search websites in 2018.
