Young Homebuyers Scramble as Prices Rise Faster Than Incomes

The Salt Lake City area is among the hottest spots for first-time buyers in part because of a staggering burst of home construction and a surge of high-tech jobs.  For millennials looking to buy their first home, the hunt feels like a race against the clock.  In the seven years since the housing crash ended, home values in more than three-quarters of U.S. metro areas have climbed faster than incomes, according to an Associated Press analysis of estate industry data provided by CoreLogic.  That gap is driving some first-timers out of the most expensive cities as well as pressuring them to buy something before they are completely priced out of the market,  

The high cost of home ownerhsip is also putting extreme pressure on 20 and 30 somethings as they try to balance mortgage payments, student loans, child care and their careers.   

"They do want all the same things that previous generations want," said Daryl Fairweather, chirf economist for the brokerage Redfin. "They just have more roadblocks, and they're going to have to come up with more creative solutions to get the homes that they want."  A Redfin analysis found these buyers are leaving too-hot-to-touch big-city markets - among them, San Francisco and Seattle, where the tech boom has sent housing prices into the stratosphere.  The brokerage found that many millennials are instead buying in more reasonable priced neighborhoods around places like Salt Lake City, Oklahome City and Raleigh, North Carolina.  That, in turn is driving up housing prices in those communities....The Salt Lake City area is among the hottest spots for first-time buyers in part because of a staggering burst of new-construction and a surge of high-tech jobs...of course the influx of people from unaffordable cities is contributing to the very problem they were trying to escape: Home prices in the greater Salt Lake City area surged 10.8 percent in the past year, while average incomes rose only 3.9 percent, according to figures from CoreLogic and the U.S. BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS.

...Salt Lake Realtor Magazine Nov. 2019