College Debt Is Keeping Younger Generation From Buying Homes

Sooudi had accumulated around $60,000 in student loan debt - money she used to pay for her undergraduate and graduate degrees. Hester Bell, a Re/Max real estate agent who has worked in Beaumont for 42 years, said she's seen a number of young buyers denied housing loans because of outstanding student debt. The study predicted that if tuition levels had stayed close to 2001 rates, 360,000 additional young people would have owned homes in 2015. Sooudi said when she studied clinical nutrition and dietetics in graduate school, she was focused on her future career, not how her student debt could affect her life post-college. James Gaines, chief economist for Texas A&M University's Real Estate Center, said in addition to having more financial debt than their parents did when they were their age, many millennials were denied home loans because of the financial crisis of 2008. Since 2008, the lending industry has drastically tightened requirements for first-time buyers, he said. According to a report released this year by the National Association of Realtors, people under 36 made up 34 percent of homebuyers between June 2015 to June 2016. Even though the market has picked up, Gaines said young buyers need to be in good financial standing to be able to afford not only the down payment and mortgage payments, but also property taxes, repairs and additional costs that come with owning a home. According to 2016 census data, the median gross rent for Jefferson County is $761 a month while the median monthly costs of owning a house is $1,223.