How Many of Your Millennial Homebuyers Suffer from Buyer’s Remorse?

In a pre-pandemic survey of homebuyers, Bankrate.com discovered two-thirds (63%) of Millennial homeowners ages 23 to 38 have regrets about their current home purchase, roughly twice the buyer’s remorse rate (35%) of Baby Boomers ages 55 to 73 years of age. Overall, 44% of homeowners, in general, have regrets about their home purchase. While some issues may be more prevalent in resale home purchases, such as unexpected maintenance, the rate of remorse is so high it’s worth taking a careful look at the phenomena even for new home builders.

The buyer’s remorse relates to aspects of homeownership easy to overlook when looking for and buying a home. Leading regrets include:

• Not factoring in unexpected maintenance or hidden costs (18%)
• Buying too small a home (12%)
• Buying in a bad area (8%)
• Making a poor investment (7%)
• Having high monthly payments (7%)
• Not getting the best mortgage rate available (6%)
• Buying too large a home (5%)

That such high percentages of homebuyers have regrets over their home purchase is surprising, especially if you are working with Millennial homebuyers. As the cost of a home purchase challenges those who do not own a home, Millennials can come primed for challenges buying a first home as they are more than three times as likely as other age groups to report student loan debt as holding them back from homeownership (19%). For those who do leap into first-time homeownership, it seems likely they would feel the pain of unexpected costs, buying a smaller home than needed, or experiencing other reported regrets.

What is your experience with your homebuyers’ remorse, Millennial homebuyers especially? What do you do to help educate buyers about their new home and homeownership? I would love to hear from you.

According to Bankrate.com, the survey was commissioned by YouGov Plc. The total sample size was 2,668 adults, including 1,493 homeowners. Fieldwork was conducted from January 30 to February 1, 2019. The survey was conducted online. The figures are weighted and are representative of all U.S. adults aged 18 years or older. For more information click here.