First-time homebuyers expected to flood housing market

A recent meeting of the nation’s lenders in Atlantic City, New Jersey said they expected hundreds of thousands of first-time buyers to enter the housing market in the coming years.

And they talked about what lenders are doing to try to satisfy the coming demand for home loans, especially here on the west coast. That includes Visalia, Tulare and Porterville and the Central Coast.

David Stevens, a former federal housing official who now leads the trade group, the Mortgage Bankers Association, said household formations will increase to about 1.6 million a year between 2015 and 2024, compared with the increase of 1.2 million a year between 2010 and 2014.

Millennials and minorities will drive this demographic boom, with two-thirds of new household formations coming from minority groups, Stevens said at the conference as quoted in the Chicago Tribune.

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People form new households either by marriage or by moving out of Mom’s house (or both). These new households either rent apartments or houses or buy places of their own. The popular wisdom suggests they will become renters first. If homeownerships don’t come first, then at least it will follow soon after an initial rental period, he predicts.

“The homeownership rate will go up again,” he told the conference. “Younger renters want a home.”

The ownership rate has plunged since the crisis of 2008. But in tandem, the rental sector has become tight and less affordable. Which means owning a home rather than leasing one is now a better option, in many places.

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We believe this is especially true here in the Central Valley. Home builders are constructing starter homes which are affordable to first-time buyers who have a proven record of financial success with a good job and buyers who pay their bills on time and establish a good credit score.

Take time this weekend to call a mortgage lender and check your FICO score and determine if you can qualify for your first home here in Visalia, Tulare or Porterville.

Jeremy Engle is a Senior Loan Officer with Country Club Mortgage, a locally owned Mortgage Firm with offices in Visalia, Tulare, Porterville and the Central Coast. He can be reached at his email site, Jeremy@JeremyEngle.com.