Christos Vasilas, 28, was ready to stop renting and start building equity with his monthly housing check. His 27-year-old brother George was ready to move out of their parents’ home.
They found a four-bedroom 1960s brick home in Denver, near the elder brother’s job at Ted’s Clothiers, that was priced at $190,000 and pooled their money to buy it. They bought it for $190,000 and pay $1,400 a month on the mortgage.
The Vasilas brothers are among a growing number of adults younger than 30 who are entering the real-estate market. Many are at ages uncommon a decade ago, and buyers are getting still younger as Generation Y joins in.
One Denver mortgage company recently considered a loan request from a 19-year-old, for example. He wanted to buy his first home but wasn’t able to qualify after his parents failed to co-sign the loan.
In 1995, people 25 and younger bought 172,000 homes nationally, said Walter Molony, spokesman for the National Association of Realtors. In 2005, that number jumped to 501,000.
“The children of the baby boom generation – approximately 75 million (nationally) born between 1982 and 1995 – that generation is just entering the years in which people buy a first home,” Molony said.
Many are just graduating from college with good educations “and are landing lucrative jobs,” said Angela Burdick, broker/owner of Metro Brokers Angela Burdick Real Estate in Littleton.
“I think what’s spurring them to buy is the investment potential.”
Dawn Wiggin of Seattle, 27, decided she was ready to buy her own home when her roommate got engaged and made plans to move out. It seemed like a good time to invest the money she had saved since childhood.
“It’s fun to know I’ll have bought when I was single and could do it myself,” Wiggin said.
There also is fear among young adults – and their parents – that they won’t be able to afford real estate in the future.
“There seems to be a lot more peer pressure, more parental pressure to buy at a younger age,” said Warren Ballard, vice president of Williams Marketing, a Washington-based firm that sells new condos and conversions. “The attitude really has changed.”
But just because more young adults are buying doesn’t mean the purchase is easy.
Young buyers are making major compromises and using creative financing to buy their first homes – including recruiting roommates or siblings, borrowing from parents, sacrificing space and living in less-desirable neighborhoods.
Shelli Quattlebaum, 22, and her 25-year-old husband Jeremy have spent the past three months looking for a house in the Fort Lupton area. To prepare for the purchase, they have been paying off credit cards and working extra jobs.
The couple was pre-approved by Universal Lending Corp. in Denver for a $150,000 loan, but they’d rather stay within the $90,000 price range.
“We didn’t want to rent anymore,” said Shelli Quattlebaum. “We didn’t want to keep throwing away money.”
Staff writer Ameera Butt can be reached at 303-820-1233 or abutt@denverpost.com. Nicole Tsong of The Seattle Times contributed to this report.
Want to buy?
Here are some websites to help you decide whether you can afford to buy a home:
- Housing and Urban Development home-buying site: www.hud.gov/buying/index.cfm
- Bankrate: www.bankrate.com
- U.S. Financial Literacy and Education Commission: www.mymoney.gov
