You need to have a bit more realistic expectations. Sure, there are going to be successful millennials who are going to earn a lot of $ and be able to afford whatever, but many more are going to be working regular jobs earning median wages. They will NEVER be able to afford homes, not unless the housing market has a crash of biblical proportion. This was not the case for the boomers generation, when housing prices were proportional to wages. Many boomers who worked regular jobs such as teachers, firemen, postal and sanitation workers earned average pay but were able to purchase houses, often even multi family houses that earned them extra rental income. They are now selling these houses, that are often very deteriorated, for tenfold what they purchased them for and retiring comfortably to Florida. This won't be the case for millennials - vast majority of them wont be able to buy homes, and when they age they won't have a house to sell to provide for comfortable retirement. Yet, they will pay taxes throughout their lives to provide retirement to a bunch of greedy boomers.

 

One thing that I had come across is that people who work for mortgage cos. now need to pass an exam to get their NMLS#--imho prior, they were like used car salesmen. When I bought my house in 2002, I told a mortgage broker I'm going with today Santander, because they are doing a 80% loan and a 10% loan so I don't have to pay PMI, the 10% loan is 1% higher amortized for 15 years (basically a heloc). He said why? PMI is a good thing, and you're better off financing 90% at a lower rate and paying PMI because "you will never, ever, be able to pay off the 10% loan and you'll be stuck for 15 years." hahahahahahahahahahahaaa It did take me about 3 yrs.....but just the things they would say to get the loan....PMI is a good thing, let's all remember that, it's good for the lender!

 

I don't really think anybody will be walking out, because people still need somewhere to live. And rents today are often higher than mortgage payments.

 

Same here, we bought a new house last year and it took almost 5 months from the day we put our offer in til the day we closed. The approval process with the bank was ridiculous, they wanted documentation for everything.

 

Sorry dropped a zero in the formula when doing the calculation at 4am It's 7.9% (26M out of ~330M) for the 10 largest cities, which incidentally includes all US cities with populations of 1M or more. Goes up to about 19% (63.8M) if you include all of the top 100, and 28% (93M) for the top 300, but by that point you're including towns with only 100k residents. Still a minuscule minority of the overall US population.

To put things into perspective for you, Illinois is the 5th most populous state. There are about a half million more residents (9.1M) of Illinois who do NOT live in its three largest cities--Chicago (2.7M), Aurora (201k), Rockford (148k)--than there are in NYC, the most populous city in the US by a factor of 2 (LA is next at 3.9M).

Nope, no calculations there. Straight quotes from a research study. You can read it yourself at the link. The conclusion holds.

 

There are plenty of cheap Podunk homes, but I don't think millennials can afford to go that route because it would be a tiresome commute to work.
I mean look at socal, if you go far east to palm desert or apple valley, there are super cheap homes. But who wants to live there?

Maybe when more and more jobs shift to telecommuting, podunk suburbs will be more attractive.

 

[/QUOTE]

You're just wrong.
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https://www.citylab.com/equity/2012/...lly-mean/1589/

 

Its totally different. Its constantly changing too, its actually gotten a little bit better over the last few months. The quality of your lender makes a huge difference, bad lenders with slow off site, out of state underwriting divisions...nightmare. Thats why I don't use big institutional lenders as I mentioned before, they're that way. Small trim local lenders are the way to go.

If you are traditionally employed its fairly straightforward, what gets real hairy is if you're self employed or something like that. My favorite story was a couple years ago I had a client who had loaned her daughter $1,500. Well, the daughter paid it back while she was in the process of getting her loan. Nightmare, had to get letters about what it was, bank statements from the daughter showing the money coming out of her account. She waited tables so lots of cash deposits. Oh my God, nightmare. If that hadn't been with one of my really good lenders no joke it likely would have killed the deal. That sort of thing is just ridiculous.

LOL, so ridiculous.

5 Months??!?! You had a terrible lender. Any average lender can get a regular loan closed in 30 days. Great lenders can do it in 2 weeks. More complex loans with self employed borrowers, etc...30-45 days at the most or the lender is just incompetent. I hardly ever have a transaction settle in more than 30 days. Hardly ever.

 

I hate to admit it, but I'm 34, and I fall in the cliché millennial category-not mad or nothing, just funny how it got categorized, and the data does indeed show it.

I bought my first home in 2010, and honestly looking to move to a larger home in the East Chula Vista foothills ('burbs) lol. I also have a few cars, but would honestly love a Toyota Land Cruiser.

 

We went with Wells Fargo, and yes it took a bit over 4 months.

 

No, I really don't. Sorry, but I just don't agree with you at all. We are coming at this from two diametrically opposed ways of looking at the world. I don't buy into the victim mentality, and I don't buy into the idea that anybody is in a situation from which they cannot get to a better place. My own life experience and what I've seen others accomplish just makes it impossible for me to be that defeatist and negative.

Yeah, much of this generation has been handed a hard hand to play from. They have student loans, their careers got off to a rocky start, housing prices are really high. Life's tough. When confronted with that reality what do you do? Do you retreat into your parents basement and say "I'll never own a house!" "poor me!" "why bother!" or do you get out there and get to work to better your life? If you're the former, then you know what? You don't deserve to own a home and you should just stay in your parents basement. I think more millennials are like the latter than you think.

Cant make a living doing what you went to school for? Do something else. Do you think I grew up wanting to be a real estate agent? Do you think my dad grew up wanting to be a paper salesman? You think my mother wanted to be an accountant and go on to file medical claims for doctors? You think my business partner wanted to manage property for people? No, none of us wanted to be these things. But, they were opportunities, we were good at what we did, and we found our way.

Have high student loans? Pay them off. Go to work, get a second job, don't buy a $50,000 Lexus, work hard and pay them off so they aren't around your neck. Put them on a 10 year term and just do it.

Housing prices too high where you are? Move someplace else. Look at ways to telecommute and/or be willing to commute further than you want to.

There is no situation in my experience that you cannot work your way out of. If you want something, work for it. Plan for it. These underemployed, indebted millennials you describe CAN improve their situations and buy homes, I have no doubt about it. Not as easy as it was for boomers no, but because it was easier for boomers isn't an excuse millennials should use not to make the most they can out of their own lives in their own situations.

LOL, I don't know what to tell you. I help teachers, firemen, postal workers, police officers buy homes in the DC area all the time. Next week I have a settlement, both buyers are millennial teachers. Guess what the sellers do who are selling the home they're buying? They're millennial teachers. I had 3 police officers I helped last year. One of those he is a police officer and she's a teacher! Millennials. I helped them sell their condo and buy a new TH because they were having a second baby. So...they were buying their SECOND home...police officer and teacher in metro DC. No help from their folks either, in fact his dad screwed him by selling him their condo which he lost his shirt on. What did he do? He worked overtime and paid it down to where they could get out from under it while setting aside some money for a minimum downpayment on the next place. He made it work.

What you are saying and the reality I'm living just do not match.

 

Yep, like I said terrible lender. I would never use Wells Fargo.

 

We can agree to disagree, but once again, statistics do not lie. Nobody with median income is able to buy in urban areas without some kind of family help or other cash infusion.

 

I'm helping them every day do just that in an expensive urban area...but you believe what you want.

And people have been helping their kids with downpayment for houses since there were houses to buy. Believe it or not, even many boomers got help from their parents when they bought their first houses too.

 

Read past the first two sentences of your own article, because the author's intent is to prove my point. Included in "urban areas" for the purposes of reaching those census figures are towns with at least 2,500 residents!

You said the vast majority of people live in large cities like NYC. This statement is true if your definition of "large cities like NYC" includes towns like Bellvue, Iowa, population 2,543--a town which is so small it has neither a McDonald's nor a Starbucks. However, if you look at the actual population numbers of large cities, which can be found here or here, you'll see that my numbers are accurate.