00:00Paulina Cachero has been following this story and she joins us now.
00:03So why is Grand Rapids kind of bucking this trend, the national trend of first-time homeownership being out of
00:08reach for so many young people?
00:09Yeah, I think what's really unique about Kent County, Michigan, is that there's a relatively favorable ratio between home prices
00:17and income.
00:18So nearly half of its homeowners in 2025 were 35 years or younger.
00:23And that's pretty amazing if you consider that the average first-time homebuyer today is 40 years old across the
00:30U.S.
00:30And that's the oldest in data going back to 1981.
00:33So it helps that Grand Rapids has a really diversified economy, its population has been growing,
00:39and there's a lot of opportunities for young workers who are earning enough to buy a home.
00:46You know, while across the U.S., I would say, you know, workers under 35, the price of a home
00:53is 3.6 times their income.
00:55But it's much, and Grand Rapids, it's much lower than that.
00:59Okay, it's much lower than that, but you wonder how it's going to stay that way because affordability is already
01:03eroding.
01:04You look at the prices at Grand Rapids, and it's up a third in five years.
01:08So could you make the argument that Grand Rapids is just a few years behind everyone else, every other city?
01:12Yeah, there's definitely a lot of pressure on the market.
01:16We've seen prices go up about 34 percent in five years, as you mentioned.
01:21And inventory is still roughly 30 percent below pre-pandemic levels.
01:24And this is an issue we're dealing with across the U.S., housing supply shortage.
01:29And actually, what we're seeing in Grand Rapids is they're building homes at a slower pace, at 5.3 percent
01:35compared to 7 percent nationally.
01:36What are people doing in Grand Rapids?
01:38I mean, you know, I think of 1963, Froot Loops.
01:43Froot Loops were pretty much like, you know, Kellogg's and all that in Grand Rapids and Battle Creek and all
01:50that.
01:50What are they doing in Grand Rapids in this boom?
01:54We've seen that the wages have, you know, kept up.
01:57It's like 13 percent higher than the rest of the state.
02:00So I think that, you know, being able to keep home prices relatively low while incomes are growing and there's
02:06a relatively young population has helped people be able to afford buying homes.
02:11It's not just about having cheap homes.
02:13It's having the economic opportunities to afford them as well.
02:16So I think we're going to keep them up and we're going to keep them up and everybody from the
02:16top of the day.
02:16We're going to keep them up and do the best of the end of the month.
Comments