REAL ESTATE
Millennials and homeownership
Is the dream dead or just deferred? by Richard Foster
O
ne day Shonté Holcomb would like to run her own day care center.
But for now the 28-year-old pre- school teacher would settle for being able to afford to move out of her parents’ house in Hanover County. “There’s no way on the sal-
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ary I make that I could move out and live on my own,” says Hol- comb, who makes about $20,000 a year without benefits as a full-time lead teacher at Tucka- way Childhood Development and Early Education Center in Henrico County’s Varina area. She’s currently looking for a sec- ond, part-time job so she could eventually afford to rent her own house or apartment. “I’ve tried roommates in the
past, and it just didn’t work out,” says Holcomb, a high school graduate who has taken some college courses but struggles to afford those, too. She’s thought about looking for a higher- paying full-time job, but she enjoys her work and co-workers at Tuckaway. “I would rather
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have a full-time job that I really love to do … [along with] a part- time job that I could not like but is giving me money,” she says. Holcomb is hardly unique.
Despite an improved job market over the last five years, millen- nials between ages 18 and 34 are more likely to be living with their parents. In 2014, this was the living arrangement for nearly a third of them, according to a report released in May by the Pew Research Center. Another report from Zillow
released in June, showed that 21 percent of millennials across the U.S., ages 23 to 34, were living at home with parents. Zillow, a real estate and
rental research firm, found that more millennials live alone in Richmond — 15 percent of the 23 to 34-year-old group — than any other U. S. metro. Zillow attributed the distinction to the region’s strong labor market and median income of $49,500 for millennials living alone. No matter how one slices the data, though, more young
people are living at home. Experts point to varying trends, from people waiting longer to get married to economic woes rang- ing from a higher cost of living to static wage growth and greater student debt burdens. At the same time, the U.S.
Department of Commerce reported that homeownership in America dipped to 63.5 percent in the first quarter of 2016, close to the 48-year low of 63.4 percent reached in 2015’s second quarter.
More barriers to home ownership Paired with increased bar- riers to homeownership such as tighter lending restrictions following the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis, the trend begs the question: Is the American Dream of homeownership still a possibility for millennials? Are they even interested? Despite the stereotype of
young adult millennials as aloof, urban-dwelling, bicycle-riding hipsters who rent loft apart-
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