For a time it seemed like the bidding wars and waived inspections on properties bought sight-unseen that characterized the real estate market during the pandemic might not matter so much — especially as home values rose spectacularly month after month. But with the frenzy subsiding, surveys are now catching up with the sentiments of millennial homebuyers, the majority of whom have major regrets about their new homes.
- One survey pegs the number of regretful millennial homebuyers at 64%, another at a staggering 82%. Either way, those numbers are much higher than they are for Gen Xers (45%) or Boomers (33%). Millennials are far likelier than those generations to be first-time buyers and to have waived traditional buyer protections.
- The top regrets among millennial homebuyers are maintenance and mortgage costs, followed by concerns over the quality of their investment and the price they paid. In other words, exactly the sort of buyers-remorse you would expect from a market where sellers had the upper hand to such an outrageous degree.
There is an upshot to all this. As many as 1 in 3 millennials now say they plan to stay in their homes for less than five years. That means lots of new homes will go back on sale, which could ease inventory issues in the years ahead.
Read more at Fortune: 82% of Millennial Homeowners Have Regrets
