Millennials AREN'T killing mortgage broking

Australia’s millennials have been accused of killing everything from landline phones to department stores, movie theatres, doorbells and golf, but not the mortgage broking industry, which has more millennial customers than any other demographic.

According to the Roy Morgan single source survey, millennials (1976-1990) make up nearly half (48.6%) of mortgage broker customers who obtained their loan in the past five years.

The next most represented demographic, Generation X (1961-1975), accounted for 38.8% of the broker market for home loans of less than five years, while the other demographics accounted for much smaller percentages, with Baby Boomers (1946-1960) accounting for 9%, Gen Z (1991-2005) for 3.1% and Pre-Boomers (pre-1946) for 0.5%.

Millennials were also found to be the generation most likely to use a mortgage broker to obtain a home loan. Of the millennials with a current home loan of less than five years, 42.5% used a mortgage broker to negotiate their home loan deals. Gen X came in second place with 37%, followed by Gen Z with 36.9%, Baby Boomers with 27.6% and Pre-boomers with 21.2%.

Roy Morgan industry communications director, Norman Morris, partially attributed the prominence of millennials in these stats to the corresponding prominence of the mortgage broking industry during millennials’ lifetime:

“The dominance of millennials in the use of mortgage brokers to obtain their home loan is most likely due to a number of factors. These include the fact that this generation has grown up at a time when mortgage brokers were always there and so that they are seen as a very familiar way of acquiring a home loan.”

“This is in contrast to the older generations that they may be less likely to use them and so be more used to going directly to a bank. Another potential reason is that with rapidly rising house prices, combined with the fact that more millennials are likely to be first home buyers, then mortgage brokers may be seen as possibly being a way of borrowing more as they have the potential to get a better interest rate.”

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