Help millennials with mortgages and build long-term member relationships

Today, millennials are the Holy Grail for financial institutions – every marketer wants to know how to reach them. And no wonder, given this 83.1 million-strong demographic is projected to have annual buying power of $200 billion. And outpacing the baby boomers, millennials are now the largest generation ever. Millennials are the best educated generation in history, have influence with older generations, and prize word-of-mouth recommendations and what they deem authentic content.

The Bad News

But millennials also have financial issues. According to an Elite Daily Millennial Study earlier this year, their student debt is a collective $1.2 trillion, with tuition costs surging 500% since 1985. This speaks, in part, to why the millennials study showed most would rather buy a car and lease a house. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, only 36 percent of millennials own a home, the lowest level for this age group since the agency began tracking homeownership by age in 1982.

It isn’t necessarily that millennials don’t want to own a home – the Demand Institute reports that 75% say owning a home is an important long-term goal. But 61% admit they can’t afford one, and many are putting off homeownership until later in life. More than other generations, the economic storms of 2008-2010 affected millennials. Many underemployed and still living with their parents. Others want to live in big cities where higher housing costs make owning unrealistic for now.

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