6 minute read
Mining the Gap
from The Solution Edition
by EXITAchiever
BY MELANIE ROBITAILLE, SR. STAFF WRITER & GRAPHIC DESIGNER
For decades rhetoric has focused on the impact that the Baby Boomer generation would have on every social system imaginable, but very little focused on their real estate impact until recently. We’re living longer than ever before, which was the concern with the sheer size of the Boomers, who have since been encouraged by government incentives to age at home. But while managing their boom, we failed to notice that millennials outnumbered them by hundreds of thousands, causing not just a ripple effect, but a perfect housing storm.
A GROWING STATISTICAL CONCERN
The National Association of REALTORS® (NAR) 2024 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers shows some major record-breaking data to support the increasing gap between first-time homebuyers, a majority of whom are millennials, and repeat buyers, who primarily fall within the late Baby Boomer generation.
If you look at the data from a 2019 Berkley Economic Review article, times were very different financially speaking when Boomers were coming up in the housing market. It was the zenith of the American Dream, which revolved around owning a home. The economy of the time was “robust and thriving” to the point where many were able to get into homeownership between the ages of 25 and 34 on a single income to boot. Compare that to NAR’s most recent median first-time buyer age of 38, and the lowest number of first-time buyers making up the market in NAR’s history of data collection since 1981, and it’s obvious that there’s a gap…and it’s growing fast.
HOPE FOR FIRST-TIME HOMEBUYERS
You can blame the Boomers or any number of factors like financialized landlords and investors, high interest rates, hard economic times, antiquated bylaws, or slow permitting processes, but up and comers like Associate Broker, Skyler Lemons of EXIT Strategy Realty in Chicago, IL are choosing to double down and focus in on this gap in order to help do something about it.
Having obtained his license at the age of 24, Skyler followed the advice to work his sphere of influence, which just so happened to be millennial first-time homebuyers who all had the same chorus of concerns and doubts about the ability to own a home.
“A lot of the people I would talk to about buying a house would come back and say, ‘Skyler you’re crazy, send me some apartments.’ So, I started talking to different lenders and I realized that all lenders have different guidelines so when it came to down payment assistance, historically, agents would just say, ‘It takes a long time,’ or whatever they needed to say as their excuse to not touch [first-time homebuyers].
My team and I started learning some of those different policies that the lenders have in place, learning who has the money with less red tape available, and learning who has the money without recapture periods and things of that nature,” he explained on a recent RISMedia webinar.
A lot of the people I would talk to about buying a house would come back and say, ‘Skyler you’re crazy, send me some apartments.'
SOCIAL & IMPACTFUL
Now at age 28, Skyler is known as the Down Payment Grant King on social media, where he’s generated thousands of leads for free by leveraging what he calls “lead magnets,” that took his viral videos from views to prospects. As a second-generation real estate professional, he grew up in the business, watching his mother, Marki Lemons-Ryhal’s burgeoning success in the industry.
“I knew as early as age seven that I wanted to follow in my mother’s footsteps,” he shared in his recent REALTOR® Magazine 30 Under 30 feature “Growing up I spent countless hours by her side, attending showings, sitting in on closings, and attending property rehabs. Real estate wasn’t just a job—it was a tangible way to make a difference in people’s lives and contribute to the community I call home.”
This vision has stayed with him as the impetus behind his work with low to moderate income first-time homebuyers, where he aims to build doorways to generational wealth and community stability.
“I specialize in guiding individuals and families— especially those in underserved communities— through homebuying, connecting them with down payment assistance programs, grants and valuable knowledge,” he said in the feature, where he also shares having helped to facilitate over $250,000 in down payment assistance for first-time homebuyers.
SHARING THE WEALTH
With so many programs out there, he admits that he started out doing much of the research legwork for himself on the front end, creating a master spreadsheet that he still refers to when updates on a new program hit, but because of his social media following, he now has several lenders that reach out to him directly when a new offering becomes available.
“I’ve been able to make it where the information is kind of coming to me now, because people know I’m the person sort of making things happen in this niche and a lot of people know that I have a data base of 2,000 buyers so it’s good to get this information in front of them,” he explained in the webinar. He also shared about his recent speaking opportunity with the Illinois Mortgage Bankers Association that provided the chance to directly network with several area banks.
With his tech-forward attitude and aptitude, he adds everyone to his CRM, and once you’re in he stays in regular contact, often via text message and through automation, to remain at the forefront of changes and new resources. But he also subscribes to an abundance mentality saying, “I feel like there’s more than enough for everybody out here to eat.”
He knows that some of these programs end up with funds left to give at the end of each year, so he’s always trying to help other agents with clients who have similar needs. He’s also currently in the process of creating some materials to help guide any other agents looking to specialize in this niche in their marketplace.
