Afraid to buy homes
For now, millennials’ employment, income and debt struggles have kept many of them from buying a home, a trend that echoes through the economy. If you’re not buying a home, you’re not paying for a home warranty, movers, roomfuls of new furniture or home repairs.
“Millennials are the first generation to see home prices fall, and because of that they’re afraid to buy houses, like in the Great Depression,” said Mark Dotzour, chief economist for Texas A&MUniversity’s Real Estate Center.
Nationally,thenumberoffirst-timehomebuyers is down to 27 percent of all homebuyers, from about 40 percent before 2007.
In addition, about 30 percent of millennials — 22 million nationally — lived with a parent in 2013.
LeBlanc rents a duplex with her 74-yearold godmother who helped raise her. Last year, they had to sell a house they jointly owned for financial reasons, she said.
Of course, some millennials have bucked the trend and bought homes.
Lyons, 30, and her husband — who both made six-figure salaries as consultants for a few years — saved to buy their first home in Dallas in 2012.
“That was a big deal,” she said. “That’s the one thing in my life that makes me feel like an adult. I never spent close to that amount of money, and it was really hard to wrap my head around.”
Overall, low homeownership rates mean millennials are not building home equity and not benefiting from home-price appreciation.
The average young family’s wealth is $108,000, about one-third below 2007 levels, according to a report from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Economists say such a statistic is worrying because it can hurt a person’s ability to borrow, which leads to increased spending.
Most millennials also aren’t saving enough for an emergency or retirement, partly because of their student debt burdens. A recent survey by Principal Financial Group found that nearly two-thirds of workers who are 23 to 35 started saving for retirement before they were 25, but less than one-third save 10 percent of their salary through an employer-sponsored plan.