For young people, moving to the Gulf Shores and buying a Gulf Shores home hasn’t made much mathematical sense for decades. But now add a new economic fact of life to the list: soaring student loan debt.
More students are taking out bigger loans than ever before, and in the last 10 years alone, education debt tripled, reaching over $1 trillion. A record number of college students are graduating knee deep in a financial hole before they begin their adult lives.
Still, new research suggests that college is working, economically. Four years on campus nets the average graduate almost twice as much in wages as someone without a degree. Those odds may be comforting in the long run, but not when you're young, deep in debt and buying a Gulf Shores home, or at least trying to buy in the Gulf Shores .
Student Loan Debt Preventing Most From Buying a Gulf Shores Home
Data released by the Federal Reserve Bank suggests that the relationship between student loan debt and the housing market has turned ugly fast. People with student debt used to buy homes at higher rates than peers who had not taken out loans, partly because going to college meant earning more money, according to the report.
But in 2012, the Fed reported that for the first time in at least a decade, 30-year-old student borrowers were less likely to take out home mortgages than other young people. Among people around 30 years old, homeownership was plunging fastest for student debtors.
Economists are worried. Last month, former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers said that student loan debt was taking the life out of the housing recovery, and the Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz called the rising debt "an educational crisis" that is "affecting our potential future growth."
But if it is a crisis, then it begins long before twenty-somethings turn 30 and start to think about buying a Gulf Shores home. From the moment they leave the classroom and enter the real world, young people are often on a delayed schedule, unable to take even baby steps toward buying a Gulf Shores home.
The impending payments and the pressure of shouldering utilities and maintenance alone has forced many would-be Gulf Shores homebuyers to either look for a roommate and rent, or move back home with mom and dad. It's a housing crisis of national proportion, not just affecting those wanting to buy a home in Gulf Shores .
Find more articles about buying a Gulf Shores home under the Gulf Shores Real Estate Categories to your right.