Survey: Millennials want to buy homes

Millennials -- a group generally defined as the demographic cohort born between 1982 and 2000-- will play a vital role in stabilizing the housing market, predicts Trulia, a real estate site.

Even in a housing market bedeviled by foreclosures and falling values, more than one in four young adults said their views on owning a home had become more positive over the past six months, according to Trulia’s most recent survey. Some 88 percent of 18-to-34-year-old renters said they aspire to be homeowners.

That sounds promising for the nation, but some would say less so for Long Island: Some 64 percent of residents in that age group said they plan to leave here in the next five years, according to a survey recently published by the Garden City-based Rauch Foundation. That’s not likely to improve unless Long Island communities can begin to provide transit-based downtowns with affordable rental housing to attract young professionals, the report says.

A 2010 profile of homebuyers and sellers conducted by the National Association of Realtors indicated that on Long Island, first-time homebuyers made up 77 percent of buyers in 2010 and the typical age was 34. Nationally, only 50 percent of buyers were first-time homebuyers, and the typical age was 30. The federal first-time homebuyer's tax credit likely contributed to the high number of first-time buyers in 2010. The profile was sponsored by the Long Island Board of Realtors and the Multiple Listing Service of Long Island.