After the global pandemic forced many young adults to move back in with their parents, a new study suggests that they’re ready to test the housing market again.
LendingTree, an online loan marketplace, analyzed about 3.4 million mortgage purchase requests on its platform during 2022 and found that Gen Z-ers made up nearly 15 percent of potential home buyers across the nation’s 50 largest metro areas. (Gen Z comprises people born between 1997 and 2012, so only the generation’s elders are looking to buy homes.)
Where are these young buyers? Not surprisingly, they’re in some of the more affordable markets in the country. But affordability isn’t the only factor.
To conduct the study, researchers examined loan requests made by Gen Z borrowers as a percentage of the total number of requests made by platform users of all ages. Salt Lake City had the highest rate of Gen Z applicants, at 22.6 percent, said LendingTree economist Jacob Channel, the author of the report. Up next were Oklahoma City, at 22.4 percent, and Birmingham, Ala., at 20.8 percent, followed by Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Louisville, Ky., and Minneapolis.
“They are a little bit more affordable,” Mr. Channel said of these smaller cities, “but certainly there are, like Salt Lake or even like in Minneapolis, areas that often skew a little bit younger and that can attract maybe a younger crowd that wants the best of both worlds — they want to live in a city, but they also want to be close to nature.”
Some of the most expensive and competitive markets — San Francisco (7.76 percent), New York (8.88 percent) and San Jose (9.7 percent) — sat at the bottom of the list.
Many Gen Z-ers who came of age during the past couple of years missed out on the record-low mortgage rates of 2020 and 2021. But even with higher rates now in place, Mr. Channel expects the number of Gen Z home buyers to grow from here.
“Even though you might hear a lot of doom and gloom and people might say, ‘Well, Gen Z-ers will never be able to buy a house,’ they said the same thing about millennials, and millennials are the largest group of home buyers in America,” he said.
Mr. Channel relayed some tips for 20-somethings looking to buy a home: Focus on boosting your credit score and repaying student loans. Shop around for the best mortgage rate. And take advantage of first-time buyer programs, including Federal Housing Administration loans, which can ease the burden on young buyers with smaller down payments and lower credit scores.
