Millennials Want Homes, But Can’t Afford Them

Millennials are having a hard time finding homes that affordable. Paired with student debt and low wage growth, this means many Millennials can’t buy even if they want to, Fortune reports.

Research suggests that millennials are starting to move out—and buying their first homes. As a provider of liquidity for lenders and investors in home mortgages, that’s good news for my company, Fannie Mae, as well as the housing finance industry we serve. But challenges remain if we are to meet this growing demand for housing, and not all of them are financial in nature.

I had the opportunity to discuss the effects of student debt at the Fortune Brainstorm Finance conference last month with Anand Cavale, head of consumer lending at SoFi, a San Francisco-based lender with a specialty in refinancing student debt.

I took away two housing-related themes from our discussion. First, young Americans with student debt don’t always know or understand their options, including many of the basics about home buying and borrowing. And second, while student debt may complicate homeownership, a much bigger problem is the out-of-whack cost of housing.

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