Hurdles to Breaking Into the Housing Market
A Washington Post article on millennials saving up to buy a home by living rent-free with family or friends cited José Loya, assistant professor of urban planning at UCLA Luskin. Record-high rental prices, along with student loan debt, car payments, child-care costs and other expenses, have tapped the finances of many young adults. Breaking into the housing market is particularly difficult for Black and Latino homebuyers, who have applied for mortgages at declining rates since the start of the pandemic, said Loya, who researches housing inequality. Such groups are disproportionately affected by rising home prices because they tend to have lower incomes. “They’re getting squeezed out,” he said. Loya also reviewed a Futuro Investigates project that found that financial institutions in New Jersey rejected Latino mortgage applicants at higher rates than their white counterparts between 2018 and 2022. Latinos who did get mortgages, meanwhile, paid higher interest rates than white borrowers on comparable home loans.
