Currently the first-time homebuyer is wrestling to cross the threshold into homeowership, contending with 
market forces including low inventory, rising prices, ferocious buyer competition and typically high amounts of student debt. Currently the share of first-time homebuyers in the housing market decreased from 35% in 2016 to 34% in 2017. The average share of new purchases made by first-timers has been 39%, according to the National Association of Realtors [NAR].
NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun said, “With the lower end of the market seeing the worst of the supply crunch, house hunters faced mounting odds in finding their first home.”
College debt isn’t a new thing. While student debt has been around for a long time over multiple generations, college tuition costs have become so high that getting a job and working your way through is simply no longer possible.
Back in 1993, 47% of college students graduated with student debt of about $9,450 per grad, according to the Federal Reserve Board of New York. As of 2012, that number surged to 71% of college graduates, and in 2016 the average loan amount totaled a shocking $37,172 per graduate.
NAR’s study showed 41% of first-time homebuyers held student debt of $29,000 in 2017, up from 40% of buyers with $26,000 in debt in 2016. And while only 41% had student debt while buying their home, 55% of first-time buyers said student debt delayed saving for their home purchase.
Forbes Magazine reported:
“College costs have been rising roughly at a rate of 7% per year for decades. Since 1985, the overall consumer price index has risen 115% while the college education inflation rate has risen nearly 500%. According to Gordon Wadsworth, author of The College Trap…if the cost of college tuition was $10,000 in 1986, it would now cost the same student over $21,500 if education had increased as much as the average inflation rate but instead education is $59,800 or over 2½ times the inflation rate.’”
Since the election, 3% growth has been realized in two of the three quarters with economists projecting the trend is expected to last at least another quarter and possibly longer.