Housing Communes

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(Post-Pandemic) Millenial are turning to housing communes

Hilary Hoffower:

"First-time homebuying millennials are finding a loophole in today's housing crisis: buying a home with their friends.

Some members of the generation are turning to co-buying as a way to overcome economic and cultural hurdles that stand in the way of homeownership, The Wall Street Journal's Alex Janin reported. It's a pre-pandemic trend, she wrote, largely accelerated by the desire for remote work and an expensive real estate market.

The number of buyers purchasing as an unmarried couple during April to June 2020 increased to 11% from 9% during the same time frame in 2019, per data from the National Association of Realtors (NAR).

"During the pandemic, people have been renting and they may have wanted more space, and so they looked at, perhaps, their roommate and decided, 'Let's go buy a home together,'" Jessica Lautz, vice president of demographics and behavioral insights for the National Association of Realtors (NAR), told Janin.

Pre-pandemic, it was already a tough world for aspiring millennial homebuyers, who struggled to save for a down payment as they dealt with the financial fallout of the Great Recession , staggering student-loan debt, and soaring living costs. As they aged into their peak homebuying years in 2020, they led a housing boom that soon morphed into a historic inventory crisis that was already forming over the past dozen years as contractors underbuilt homes.

Home prices shot up, reaching a record high of $386,888 in June. The biggest victim of this housing shortfall was the starter home, which was already nearing its demise even before the pandemic. While the housing market has since begun to cool and contractors have begun to build more homes, these homes are in the higher end of the market, NAR's director of housing and commercial research, Gay Cororaton, told Insider.

These affordability issues have boxed many millennials out of the housing market, forcing them to get resourceful in finding ways to fast-track their path to homeownership. For some, that's moving out to the exurbs or buying fixer-uppers. For others, it's inventing their own commune."

(https://www.businessinsider.com/millennials-buying-homes-friends-communes-housing-crisis-2021-10?)