The Millenial’s
The demographic for City Weekly readers is Millennials. Interesting stuff coming from rentcafe.com about the typical Millennial. Using a fictional male named ‘Matt’ who’s 35 years old, he graduated from college with a master’s degree in business, is tech-savvy and is optimistic about the future of AI and tech. He owns his home where he lives with his partner and their dog and is a caregiver for his parents. He spends time on YouTube watching videos and learning; loves to shop online from brands he knows and is generally optimistic about the future. Nationally 52.4% of the total Millennial population owns their home but locally that may not be the case. And, about 43% of the group still has student loans, more than any other generation, with an average of $42,600 per person.
Salt Lake City has a strong Millennial population with about 25.4% of the metro population, and 40% of the city’s total population is between 20 and 39 years old. This is because we still have a growing economy, especially in the tech industry, which heavily recruits the age group. Another recent study by commercialcafe.com reported that the median yearly income for Millennial households was approximately $115,000, which is much higher than other large cities along the Wasatch Front. Yet the reality is that the high cost of housing here is keeping more Millennials away from home ownership, marrying and having children.
The average cost of a home in the capitol city was somewhere between $559,700 to $572,000 depending on the source this July. If you make $115,000 and have 5% down, you probably can’t afford a home price of more than $345,000 at current mortgage rates. Given that statistic, a Millennial could possibly by a condo in the City but not a home without a huge down payment or going in with a partner to buy the average priced property. Hint: use ‘The Rule of Three’ to figure out what you could afford by dividing your gross income by three, then divide that number by 12 (months). That gives you an idea as to how much of a monthly payment you may be able to afford. In this case it would be about $3,200 a month. For those who don’t own, the average rent in the city according to rentcafe.com is now $1,596.
How do you save for a downpayment? 1) set a goal for how much money to save; 2) tighten your budget; 3) save any raises or windfalls; 4) take a second job; 5) work with a local lender to make a plan and see if there’s any local first-time buyer assistance programs. And it’s a fact that everybody loves house porn-looking on the web at homes. Suggestion? Use utahrealestate.com and nothing else. Why? Because that is the website where all properties for sale by a REALTOR are loaded-it’s where the data starts. Other websites grab the data and manipulate it with their algorithms, which often are wrong when doing calculations of payments and home values.