Millennial’s interest, or lack of interest, in home ownership has been a source of angst for the mortgage industry. Hard data on the subject has been relatively scarce, though that’s changing.

For instance, according to a Lending Tree survey, Millennials in Salt Lake City, Minneapolis and Pittsburgh were more likely to be pursuing homeownership than in the other 50 largest metropolitan areas of the U.S., and 25 percent of mortgage purchase requests between Jan. 1, 2018 and Nov. 25, 2018. came from millennials.

Key findings from the Lending Tree survey are as follows:

• Salt Lake City, Minneapolis and Pittsburgh are the metros where millennials are making up the largest percentage of purchase requests. In Salt Lake City, a majority of the total purchase requests in the area, 51 percent, come from millennials. In Minneapolis and Pittsburgh, 48 percent come from millennials.
• In Tampa, Fla., Las Vegas and Miami, millennials are making the least purchase requests. Only 30 percent of purchase requests came from people under 35 in Tampa.

--That number was only slightly higher in Las Vegas and Miami, where 31 percent and 32 percent of purchase requests came from those under 35.

• San Francisco, San Jose, Calif. and New York are where millennials wait the longest to buy homes, with an average age of 29.6 years old. This compares with an average of 28.7 years old across the remaining 47 largest metros in the U.S.
• Salt Lake City, Louisville, Ky. and Cincinnati are the metros with the lowest average age of buyers under 35. In each of these areas, the average age for potential millennial homebuyers is around 28 years old.
• San Jose, Calif., San Francisco and New York are the places where millennials had the highest average credit scores. In each of these areas, the average millennial homebuyer had a credit score higher than 704. By comparison, the average credit score for millennial homebuyers across the 50 largest MSAs in the country was 656.
• Memphis, Tenn., Birmingham, Ala. and New Orleans are where millennials had the lowest average credit scores. Credit scores in these three areas were 622, 629 and 634 respectively.

Most popular cities among millennial homebuyers include:

Salt Lake City
Share of Purchase Mortgage Requests Coming from Millennials: 51%
Average Requested Loan Amount: $234,391

Minneapolis
Share of Purchase Mortgage Requests Coming from Millennials: 48%
Average Requested Loan Amount: $200,930

Pittsburgh
Share of Purchase Mortgage Requests Coming from Millennials: 48%
Average Requested Loan Amount: $128,316

Least popular cities among millennial homebuyers include:

Tampa, Fla.
Share of Purchase Mortgage Requests Coming from Millennials: 30%
Average Requested Loan Amount: $174,301

Las Vegas
Share of Purchase Mortgage Requests Coming from Millennials: 31%
Average Requested Loan Amount: $224,736

Miami
Share of Purchase Mortgage Requests Coming from Millennials: 32%
Average Requested Loan Amount: $225,536

 

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The BuildFax Housing Health Report for November found that the year-over-year rate of single-family housing authorizations, maintenance and remodeling have all decreased. This is the first time since 2011 that all three categories have decreased in the same month, pointing to a potential market slowdown on the horizon.

The report, which leverages U.S. property condition and history data to deliver macroeconomic as well as more granular trends, also reveals that eight of the last 10 instances of blanket declines occurred during the recession and its recovery in 2008 and 2009.

Other key points on housing supply are as follows:

• Single-family housing authorizations decreased by 0.86 percent year over year.
• Maintenance volume decreased by 5.85 percent year over year.
• Remodel volume decreased by 12 percent year over year.

“More so now than in years prior, the compounding effects of natural disasters, scarcity in the construction labor market and recent tariffs have impacted housing growth, not to mention systemic factors, like rising mortgage rates, that influence consumer behavior,” said BuildFax COO Jonathan Kanarek. “While it’s natural to see some leveling off after steep growth, the next few months will be telling, whether a downturn is on the horizon or the market is simply softening is yet to be seen.”

The report also looked at commercial construction, which shows decreases this month are in line with similar residential declines. However, commercial construction over the last five years has seen steady increases, primarily in construction spending. In fact, BuildFax data suggests there are disproportional increases between construction cost and volume, which point to a labor shortage in the market.

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Workers Credit Union has joined the LoanStreet Inc. lending platform,  which is designed to offers significant cost savings to credit unions by automating manual processes and providing access to its nationwide network of loan buyers and sellers.

“We turned to LoanStreet as an alternative funding source for our fast expanding loan operations.  We simply had more loan demand than capacity on our balance sheet. LoanStreet’s deep network of credit unions quickly solved our needs,” said Tim Smith, CFO at Workers.  “Ultimately, we ended up on-boarding our entire participation book onto LoanStreet’s platform.  Once we saw the benefits of LoanStreet’s ongoing reporting tools, we immediately decided to take full advantage of those services and moved decisively to automate all of our participation reporting.”

LoanStreet’s fully-integrated, online platform brings together a series of tools that help credit unions more effectively share and manage loans at scale. The technology automates the entire reporting process and provides a standardized, consolidated view of every transaction in a user’s portfolio — no matter how many different counterparties it may partner with. These powerful tools provide credit unions with the ability to track their loan portfolio performance with greater accuracy and less administrative overhead.

“Manual processing of participation reports is a deadweight on the credit union industry,” said Ian Lampl, CEO of LoanStreet. “We allow them to more profitably manage and diversify their balance sheet, and free up valuable time to more effectively serve their members.”

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