Paul TostoA couple of interesting stories popped up last week suggesting both hope and despair about the housing markets. The positive: Twin Cities home sales appear to be moving off the bottom. The negative: Young adults nationally seem increasingly unwilling or unable to buy a home.
We decided to cast a wider net, asking Minnesotans in the MPR News Public Insight Network to share some thoughts about the housing market in their towns and neighborhoods. What are they seeing? Are there concerns about young people buying homes?
Click on the map icons below to read what others told us, then add your voice.
View Feeling better about the housing market? in a full screen map
Carlos Gutierrez is a mortgage broker in Plymouth who sees home sales on the upswing but adds that his 28-year old son “does note see a reason to buy a home at this time.”
Kari Denissen Cunnien wrotes us that she was in early 30s, married and with a toddler but that she and her husband were still renting while lots of their friends bought homes.
Cunnien’s husband is in grad school and although they have income through her job and would love to buy a house, “we could not afford the added expenses on top of a mortgage. The garbage pick-up, water, taxes and responsibility to replace the roof or water heater.
“We are of the generation with huge student loan debt and now a large daycare bill,” she adds. “It’s just not in the cards.”