The housing market is looking for a few good millennials.
Well, more than a few. More like a few million.
And by good, the market means young people with money. And not just an income, what the market wants is a meaningful relationship.
You know, like marriage.
Honestly, there doesn't have to be a ring, but the market needs people who are committed enough to each other to get out there, slap down a down-payment and buy a darned house.
That – according to many brokers and other experts – would juice the market. It would dramatically add demand at the lower end of home prices and that boost construction, while also freeing the current homeowners to move up the chain a bit.
First-time homebuyers are typically young and gosh, there just are not enough of them out there buying.
They’re not missing, they are just not buying. Millennials are the largest group in the population, but the research on millennials has been pretty clear: they have been waiting longer to get married and they’ve been slow to start making a good living (something about living in Mom’s basement until they’re more than a 20 hour-a-week barista).
Ah, but at least the financial outlook is improving, according to government surveys as reported by our friends at Demo Memo, the go-to blog for demographics.
In 2010, barely one-third of millennials said their financial situation was getting better. That is up to 54.1 percent in the latest surveys, reports blogging demographer Cheryl Russell.
So that’s the money side of things. What about the altar? Well, mixed news from there, she reports.
The median age of women marrying for the first time has gone up again, edging from 27.0 years in 2014 to 27.1 this year, she said.
Yes, but the median age of men marrying for the first time has fallen – very slightly, but still, it’s a first, nonetheless. The median age for me slipped from 29.3 years to 29.2 years.
Of course, compared to the generation of Ward ("I'm home, June!!") Cleaver, those ages virtually make people spinsters. The median age for marriage in 1956 for women was 20.1 years. For men, it was 22.5 years.
