Who’s Powering the Housing Market? Surprise! It’s Milennials

Millennials are growing up, settling down and looking to buy a house — for the extra room and the investment opportunity.

Millennials were the largest group of home buyers (34 percent) for the fourth consecutive year, according to NAR’s 2017 Home Buyer and Seller Generational Trends study. By comparison, baby boomers were 30 percent of buyers.

“That myth that millennials don’t want to own things is not true,” said Jeremy Wacksman, chief marketing officer at the Zillow Group. “Millennials are not just starting to buy homes; they’re powering the housing market.”

After five years of living together in a one-bedroom apartment, Jamil Saeed and Felicity Greenpalm are ready to take the next step and buy a house in Seattle.

Saeed, a 29 year old marketing consultant, and Greenpalm, 31, who works for Nordstrom, are thinking about starting a family and that means they need more space.

“We want a yard and a place where we can have all of our friends and family over,” Saeed told NBC News. “I feel like if we don’t do something soon, we’re going to get priced out of the market. Salaries aren’t increasing quickly enough to keep up with the pace that home prices are growing. It’s kind of now or never for us.”

“Millennials have been fairly slow to get into the market, but we are seeing an uptick in millennial buyers this year — which is a good sign, because as home values rise, we want a wider number of people to participate in this housing recovery,” said Lawrence Yun, chief economist at the National Association of Realtors (NAR). “There’s a pent-up demand and as the economy continues to improve, we expect to see more people in their early thirties, adults who are still living with their parents — clearly not their idea of the American dream — begin to look for their own housing units.”

Research done by the National Association of Homebuilders found that more than 90 percent of millennials say they eventually want to buy a house.

“Home ownership is very much at the center of what they want to do in their lives,” said Rose Quint, NAHB’s assistant vice president for survey research. “They see the challenges, but home ownership is still front and center one of their major goals.”