It is often said that a home is the biggest purchase a person will make in their lifetime. That may be true, but if you are a recent college graduate, it might seem like the title of “Largest Purchase in a Lifetime” won’t belong to a home, but a small, rectangular piece of paper with your name on it. It’s your college diploma, of course, and since the class of 2015 has graduated with more debt than ever before (an average of $35,000 per graduate) home purchases may be the last thing on their minds.
Many college graduates are more focused on putting their newly acquired multi-thousand dollar piece of paper to work and getting a job in order to move out of their parents’ house.
But before starting the job search at the local level, it may be pertinent to look in some lesser-known areas of the country. Areas like certain cities in Kansas or Niagra Falls, N.Y., where they are offering money toward student loan repayments in exchange for living in their fair city, reports Fortune.
The purpose of programs like Kansas’ Opportunity Zones program is to attract Millennials to areas where the population has been declining. Kansas’ program paid out $1.2 million in student loan repayments in 2015 and the program covers 77 counties across the state. The Niagra Falls program is similar, though on a much smaller scale, and will pay recent college graduates around $3,500 a year for two years.
Other cities are looking beyond student loans and are trying to make the prospect of becoming a homeowner seem more tangible and realistic. Chattanooga, Tenn. is trying to attract young computer programmers to the city by offering up to $11,250 that can be put towards relocation expenses and buying a home in the area.
