Millennials may finally be buying

Carrington VP says all signs point to more activity from recent graduates

Much has been made of the low homeownership rates among millennials, but according to Trulia, millennials have also put off marriage and having children, which points to deeper causes than the financial crisis of the 2000s having created fear of home ownership.

Millennials may be moving into the housing market at greater rates today than in the past, however. “Six months ago, millennials were not buying houses,” said Rey Maninang, senior vice president and national sales director at Carrington Wholesale.

“The job market is better today. For a lot of millennials, when they graduated from college it was hard to find a good job so they became more transient than previous generations as they took poor jobs and then moved for better jobs,” Maninang said.

Today, he said, many millennials have better jobs and that jobs now exceed the workforce, making it easier for millennials to consider buying. “Millennials are more confident now than they were just a short time ago. The leading indicators are all positive, car sales are up, housing starts are up as are completions. People who bought their first homes a few years ago are now moving up, which creates more inventory for today’s first-time buyers, and it all creates more opportunities for young people to buy homes,” he said.

Carrington specializes in underserved markets and writing loans for people who may not qualify for traditional bank loans.

According to an article on Carrington’s website, one third of consumers have a FICO score below 640 and millennials score even lower than 640 typically while struggling to get out from under an average of more than $23,000 in consumer and student debt.

The tide has begun to turn and originators who want millennial business may need relationships with companies like Carrington as they seek to build this part of their business.