This is a big week for market reports. Top of it is Abodo’s report on the state of the millennial market. Unsurprisingly, it shows that home ownership for millennials is down compared to historical trends. More interesting is that it traces this trend back ten years to well before millennials entered the market. It also has a good breakdown of how long millennials have to save in order to have a down payment for the median priced home. (Hint: It’s a long time.) The data seems to show that if people want more millennials in the market, wage increases and competitive low downpayment programs would probably go further than blaming avocado toast.
That news dovetails nicely (?) with the Case-Shiller numbers for April, showing that Seattle prices are up 12.9% year over year. That’s over 2% faster than the national rate of growth, and according to the data, the fastest growth in the country. Median prices are up, inventory is still down, and there’s not really much sign of this changing.
At least renters in Seattle are about to get some help with keeping their voter registration up to date.