Home ownership rates among millennials are rising at the fastest rate since the end of the recession. According to a recent report, 30% of millennials purchased a home within the past year. Although homeownership rates are still eight percentage points lower among this generation than baby boomers, young adults are rapidly catching up.
However, millennials haven’t proven themselves to be the most astute homebuyers. Another report found that 70% of homeowners in this generation regretted their purchase. This indicates that they need to be better about doing their due diligence when making major purchases, especially houses.
Many young adults are learning from their more tech-savvy peers. They are looking for better ways to purchase homes. This includes using a variety of apps that are designed to make the homebuying purchase easier.
Here are some great apps that can help millennial homebuyers. A spokesperson from maricopa home values told us that these tools are very useful.
Quicken mortgage app
One of the biggest mistakes that millennials make is buying a home that costs more than they can afford. While the bank looks at every borrower’s debt-to-income ratio before approving a purchase, there are a number of expenses that even the most cautious actuaries can’t take into account. They also may not be able to account for future expenses, such as the cost of supporting a growing family.
You need to take some initiative and create your own budget. In order to do this, you need to know how much your mortgage will be each month.
The Quicken mortgage app is great for this. You can enter the price of the home that you are looking for and see what your monthly payment will be. Existing homeowners can also use this app to see whether it is worth refinancing an existing mortgage.
Homesnap
The Homesnap app is one of the most innovative home buying tools available. The algorithms are so impressive that you may have hard time believing it works.
With this app, you can simply take a picture of a house and get all of its history from public records around the country. The picture is immediately syndicated to property records in various jurisdictions. Within a matter of minutes, you will have information about the home’s price, current and previous owners, any liens on the property and other records that millennial home buyers should be aware of. Since most millennials don’t understand all the factors that go into purchasing a house, this is a good way to help them.
This is a great app to use if you want to find out whether there are any issues with the property that you need to be aware of. It will also help you know whether the price of a property for sale is similar to other properties that were sold in the area.
Redfin
There are a lot of websites that allow you to look for homes in a given city or ZIP Code. However, sometimes you need a house hunting solution with more precision.
Redfin is another great app worth looking into. It allows you to draw a perimeter around the area that you are willing to purchase a home. You will get updates about all homes for sale in that area. These listings are updated every 15 to 30 minutes.
Zillow
Zillow has one of the most comprehensive property listings in the country. You will find prices on over 100 million different homes. You can also filter your listings according to price, geography, school systems in the area, crime rates, local property taxes and much more.
All of this information is regularly syndicated to the Zillow app. The app is very simple to use, which is why it is a favorite for millennial home buyers.