Mortgages for Zoomers: Russia Lowers Age for Housing Loans

Over the past year, the share of mortgage borrowers aged 18 to 20 has grown in our country. In the fourth quarter of 2024, they took out 1.6% of housing loans, according to the Bank of Russia. It seems like a small number, but previously the share of such young housing borrowers was generally counted in units. It is curious that more than two-thirds of such borrowers are girls. Is it possible to talk about a new trend in the real estate market or is this a one-off phenomenon, MK found out from experts.

Roof for Generation Z

Representatives of Generation Z, that is, people born after 1995 and before 2010, who are called zoomers for short, have become more active in taking out mortgages. From October to December 2024, 1.6% of new housing loans were issued to Russians aged 18 to 20. Interestingly, girls are twice as active as boys in trying to solve the "housing issue". According to the Scoring Bureau, they account for 68% of all loans issued in this age category. The second interesting fact is the pronounced regionality of the observed trend. The most willing to take out a mortgage are young people from outside the capital: residents of Bashkiria, Krasnodar Krai and Sverdlovsk Oblast. The average size of a housing loan in this category is 2.5 million rubles. For comparison, in Russia as a whole this figure is 4.23 million rubles.

Some analysts linked the figures that appeared in the Central Bank of the Russian Federation statistics to the effect of preferential programs, in particular, IT mortgages, because in the high-tech sector, many young people begin working in their profession, including in large organizations, while still receiving their education. “If we talk about borrowers under 25, then young people — representatives of Generation Z — are distinguished by their activity, ability to quickly adapt, long-term vision and digital literacy,” says Svetlana Opryshko, director of the Vseostroike.rf portal. “According to statistics, today more than 60% of ninth-grade graduates and a significant portion of 11th-grade graduates choose college, which means that at 18–20 years old, many are no longer studying, but working, sometimes receiving a relatively good income. Therefore, banks are lowering age requirements so as not to miss this category of borrowers. Among young mortgage holders today, you can also find bloggers, entrepreneurs, representatives of the IT sphere, which is facilitated by the preferential mortgage program for this category of borrowers.”

However, most experts, although they agree with the trend towards younger mortgage borrowers, believe that it is too early to talk about a "zoomer trend" in this area. As Ruslan Syrtsov, Managing Director of Metrium, reminded, the average age of mortgage borrowers in Russia is 36 years. Over the past five years, the figure has decreased by four years. About half of the clients applying for housing loans are 30-40 years old. At the same time, buyers who have recently reached adulthood (18-20 years old) are rare. Among them, young mothers and children of wealthy parents predominate. A separate layer of clients is made up of orphans who make alternative transactions with real estate received from the state. Also among young borrowers there are young but successful IT specialists and bloggers. However, the number of such buyers is relatively small, and they do not fundamentally affect the structure of demand, the expert emphasized.

The trend towards a younger mortgage audience has been observed for several years now. However, according to Opryshko, the majority of borrowers are people aged 30 to 40. They have a higher education, work in their field, most are married, and about half have children at the time of applying for a loan. “In my opinion, the younger age of borrowers is primarily due to family mortgages, and not to the program for IT employees,” continues the conversation Yaroslav Gutnov, founder of SIS Development. “It is housing loans for parents with children that serve as the main driver of demand. Moreover, the program has even become an incentive to increase the birth rate, although it has not yet led to a baby boom. The share of the youngest borrowers aged 18-20 is unlikely to grow significantly in the near future. But there will be more mortgage clients aged 20-30.”

Not the capital alone

The pronounced regional focus of the "zoomer mortgage" is explained simply: it's all about the price. In Moscow, apartments are on average two to three times more expensive than in Russia, and the "entry threshold" for those wishing to purchase them is gradually approaching 10 million. As noted by Elena Kudryavtseva, head of the mortgage department of the new-building aggregator RedCat, the average age of buyers of housing on credit in Moscow and the Moscow region is 30-35 years. Young people are not ready to take on credit obligations. They prefer to rent housing for a short period of time and change it when it is convenient for them. "But the fact is that the solvency of young people has generally increased greatly," the expert noted. "They are ready to pay from 60 thousand rubles a month for rent. At the age of 18-20, as a rule, there are no children yet, so a family mortgage at 6% is unavailable to them, and at 27% the payment will be so high that rent will be much more comfortable than a mortgage."

Young people also have difficulties of a purely formal nature. Getting a mortgage in Moscow or the Moscow region at the age of under 20 is quite difficult, since all banks have strict requirements for employment and income verification, and such borrowers, as a rule, rarely meet the work experience requirements. "Also, when considering applications from young borrowers, banks ask to involve one of their parents or relatives with a longer work experience as co-borrowers," explained Maria Avrova, head of the mortgage lending department at Est-a-Tet. As a result, in the capital region, the share of young borrowers from 18 to 24 years old does not exceed 2%, and the age threshold in this group is shifted to 23-24 years.

But is it rational to issue multimillion-dollar housing loans to people at such a young age? “Of course, this is an absolutely reasonable approach,” Gutnov believes. “Financial difficulties are not excluded at any age. But banks carefully check the solvency of potential clients, including establishing the real degree of emancipation of the borrower, his career prospects. In addition, as a rule, young people choose budget real estate options. Accordingly, payments for such housing are usually not burdensome.” And in case clients still have problems with employment, the law provides for credit holidays. So there is definitely no reason to cut young people off from the mortgage market. When making such decisions, one cannot be guided by stereotypes: each buyer should be considered individually, the expert is sure.

"The rationality of issuing mortgages to young people is determined by banks," added Svetlana Opryshko, for her part. "Considering that credit institutions themselves are lowering the requirements for the age of borrowers, this makes sense."