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No surprise here: Millennials are particularly having trouble achieving homeownership in this challenging market. As home prices soar and inventory remains tight, many find themselves priced out. But some are turning to an out-of-the-box solution. Rather than renting or ponying up for a mortgage with a sky-high premium, some Millennials are using multifamily real estate as a path to homeownership. By investing in these properties, they can live in a home they can call their own while offsetting some of the costs by renting out the extra units or sharing the property with friends.
After graduating college in 2016 with a degree in finance, Frantz Jacques began working as an account executive in Chicago and saving to buy his first home. Raised in a family of homeowners in Evanston just north of the city, he says he realized early on the benefits of owning real estate.
But after a year of facing bidding wars on some listings and being priced out of others, the 25-year-old decided to take an unconventional path to homeownership for a first-time buyer: He began shopping for a multifamily property rather than making a single-family residence his first real estate investment.
Like first-time home buyers in other expensive cities, where high prices and tight inventory have sidelined many millennials, Jacques says the multifamily route will allow him to live in the home while renting the other units to help defray mortgage costs and build equity.
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