San Jose leads way on the top 10 most popular metros for millennial homebuyers

Categories: Homes Planning Real Estate

Published 01/28/2021

Photo by Zen Chung from Pexels

The homebuyer demand was off the charts in 2020, but which markets saw the favor of the biggest group of homebuyers? Millennials! According to a new report from mortgage site LendingTree, millennial buyers became the majority of potential homebuyers in most of the country’s largest metro areas.

The report analyzed mortgage requests and offers for borrowers across the 50 largest U.S. metro areas from Jan. 1, 2020, to Dec. 15, 2020, and honed in on borrowers aged 24 to 39. The report ranked the metros by the percentage of total purchase mortgage requests LendingTree received from borrowers in that age group.

LendingTree found that millennials made up at least 50 percent of purchase mortgage requests in 43 out of the 50 largest metros. San Jose, California; Boston, and Denver were the metros where millennials make up the largest share of purchase requests: 61.79 percent, 59.09 percent, and 59.07 percent, respectively.

LendingTree found that the oldest millennial homebuyers were in San Francisco, San Jose, and New York City, with an average age of 32.1 years old — which the site said was about half a year older than the average 31.57 across all 50 of the largest metros in the country. “Since these metros are so expensive, millennials likely need to spend more time saving before they’re ready to buy a house,” the report said.

Millennial buyers in San Jose, San Francisco, and New York City had the highest credit scores, with an average of 721. By contrast, the average millennial credit score for the 50 largest metros was 669.

Take a look below to view the entire list: