Dive Brief:

• Millennials are ready to buy their first homes, but they’re stymied by debt and low credit scores, Realtor.com Chief Economist Jonathan Smoke said this week.

• Speaking at the National Association of Real Estate Editors’ conference in Miami, Smoke said 85% of would-be homebuyers born after 1980 revealed in a survey that they plan to buy, even if it takes them longer than a year to save the down payment.

• Nearly 40% of them, however, said they have not become homeowners because they can’t find houses they can afford. Speaking on a panel with Smoke, Nela Richardson, chief economist for Redfin, noted that homebuilders are concentrating on building move-up homes for buyers who can afford houses now rather than on lower-cost entry-level homes for reluctant millennials.

Dive Insight:

A third speaker, however, said the reluctance of millennials to purchase property has less to do with a lack of interest or inventory than with student debt. More than half of renters who answered a Federal Reserve Bank of New York survey about why they had not bought homes answered: "too much debt/not saved enough."

"Large amounts of student debt and less-than-stellar job prospects for recent college graduates make the dream of homeownership shine less brightly than in the past," Dennis Carlson, chief economist at Equifax, said. Still, he noted that things could change: "We also see indications that they will eventually want the family, the car, and the house that older generations desired, just with a significant delay."