By Lenny McNeill

In its September mortgage finance forecast, the Mortgage Bankers Association is projecting 2019 originations to surpass $1.9 trillion. And, while 2019 has presented refinance opportunity, 65 percent of the market or over $1.2 trillion is purchase origination volume.

Yet, in a nearly two trillion-dollar market, the United States homeownership rate has fallen from 64.8 percent in Q4 2018 to 64.1 in 2Q 2019 per the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

There’s more we can do, particularly as rising demographics enter the homebuying landscape. Of note, millennial borrowers have represented the largest group of homebuyers since 2014, and of this group, 65 percent of them are first-time homebuyers. The multicultural demographic, led by Hispanics, is expected to represent three out of every four new housing starts by 2025; and, roughly 18 percent of all homebuyers were single women in 2018, representing one-fifth of the market.

Diving deeper in the multicultural market, Pew Research shares the “U.S. Hispanic population reached 59.9 million in 2018, up from 47.8 million in 2008. This makes Hispanics the nation’s second-fastest-growing racial or ethnic group after Asian Americans. Hispanics made up 18 percent of the U.S. population in 2018, up from 5 percent in 1970.”