Housing Crash Scares Away Younger Buyers

By Michael S. Derby

The younger you are, the more freaked out you are likely to be by the housing market crash.

A new paper by Federal Reserve Bank of Boston economists used consumer sentiment data collected in the Michigan Survey of Consumers over the summer to try to find out how the housing market's terrible state of affairs was affecting the willingness to buy a new home.

Age mattered, which suggests that a new generation may be coming along that will cast a wary eye at home ownership for a long time to come. The finding also suggests a new headwind to future growth levels, given that it's hard for the economy to achieve a better rate of growth when the housing sector remains moribund.

The Michigan data suggests that younger survey respondents "are relatively less confident about home ownership after larger declines, while older respondents are relatively more confident," the paper said.

Read the full post at The Wall Street Journal.

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