It’s not only the lack of apartments with reasonable rent, decent amenities and easy access to commuting that is stopping younger Long Islanders from starting their own households.
It’s an overload of debt coupled with the lack of rental properties. With higher college loan amounts owed, lower-paying jobs, and high housing costs, the odds are stacked against millennials.
But some see millennials finding a solution. “The notion of millennials not wanting home ownership is without a doubt not true,” said John Perfetti Jr., a senior mortgage banker at Citizens Bank. “The dream of home ownership for millennials is definitely alive and well. The industry is seeing many millennials inquiring for a home mortgage.”
Millennials are expected to make up close to 65 percent of the home-buying bracket in 2021, Perfetti said, and he’s worked with some who understand how to navigate the home-buying process. In his experience, young people know what they want, and that does not only include renting.
Millennial home buyers use different loan product options that help with a down payment, Perfetti said. The range of loans that are approved varies, depending on the customer’s financial standing, including each borrower’s situation, job, income and credit scores.
“There are many millennials actively pursuing home ownership and mortgage, financing every day and realizing it is easier than they thought to obtain a home mortgage,” Perfetti said. Many are looking for looking for a house for the long term rather than a starter-type home, he added.
There’s also a startup company working to remove what it calls market distortions to produce more benefits for current renters and future homeowners.
Bill Catlan, a lawyer, cloud architect and a Huntington resident, founded unscrewed.io in an effort to address some of the structural issues with housing. His site aims to spread information and help people identify fees they can negotiate away in major transactions (including hidden fees in auto loans, retirement products, and mortgage loans).
The sooner a loan or mortgage can be paid off, the sooner that money can be put elsewhere. To encourage that, unscrewed.io focuses on the 30-year mortgage.
“We see [the 30-year mortgage] as one of the more troubling mechanisms; it introduces all kinds of leverage into the marketplace, and that leverage is what’s partially responsible for the escalating prices,” Catlan said.
He’s looking to reduce the term of the mortgage by 10 years to a 20-year plan. “You get the benefit of compounding a lot sooner and you take care of a basic need, which is housing,” Catlan said.
His “unmortgage” industry would promote debt freedom and cash-back rewards and protection for nonluxury homeowners, for a one-time founding member fee to join. “We’re trying to create an organization that has a vested interest in reversing some of the troubling trends in housing,” Catlan said.