If you know a millennial homebuyer, there’s a good chance they live in Boston or Pittsburgh.
There are more millennial homebuyers in those cities than in the rest of the country's 50 largest cities, according to a study released Thursday by LendingTree. The study analyzed mortgage requests for consumers under the age of 35 during the past 12 months, comparing them to the total mortgage-seeking population.
In Boston, millennials made up 52.5% of all mortgage requests. Pittsburgh followed at 48.96%, while Washington, D.C., was close behind at 48.17%.
LendingTree found that on average 41.36% of all mortgage requests through its platform came from millennials, with the average age in that group being 29. Other cities with above-average levels of millennial homebuyers include Des Moines, Minneapolis, Chicago and Columbus, Ohio.
"The under-35 crowd had been, for some years, hesitant to enter the housing market, but we're seeing that start to shift," LendingTree Chief Executive Doug Lebda said in a news release. "The data all points to the fact that millennials are increasingly eager to own rather than rent, and even the incredibly high real estate prices in some markets don't necessarily deter them."
The average mortgage loan made to a millennial applicant was $220,949 and their down payments averaged $32,759.
But higher costs don’t necessarily deter millennial homebuyers, LendingTree reported. San Francisco, which has the highest mortgage loans and average down payments in the country at $505,160 and $162,474, respectively, also had 42.32% of its home loan requests come from millennials.
