3 Ways Millennials Can Profit From Their Housing Woes

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  • Investors are wise to check out three stocks to ride millennial housing trends.
  • Ameriprise Financial (AMP): The financial planner can help millennials get into a better financial position to own a home in the future. 
  • Invitation Homes (INVH): Renting needn’t be a step down in life.  
  • SoFi Technologies (SOFI): Student loans are a small part of the digital bank’s business.  
Millennial Housing Trends - 3 Ways Millennials Can Profit From Their Housing Woes

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Fortune recently reported on a couple of surveys about millennial housing trends. 

The first survey from the Bank of America Institute, an economic think tank from BofA. It found that 60% of millennials believe home ownership is more important today than it was during their parents’ generation. 

A second survey from Bank of America found that home ownership is the top signal of financial success and fifth for overall success. That’s ahead of building a family and career fulfillment. With data like this, it is no wonder American millennials are so darn unhappy.    

Social media and peer pressure could have something to do with it. 

“On average, especially in the tech space, millennials are making more than their parents did at their comparative age and are feeling the pressure of society to buy a house, or at minimum, a condo,” Elena Nunez Cooper, the 33-year-old CEO of Ascend PR, tells Fortune. “On social media, a plethora of ‘instant millionaires’ showing off their ‘perfect lives’ with big houses, supercars, and seemingly unlimited wealth pressures millennials to go big or go home.” 

Other than changing how they view their current situation, there might not be a way out for millennials, given the current state of housing and higher interest rates.

However, as the saying goes, “Make lemonade if life gives you lemons.”

Here are three stocks for millennials to buy to benefit from their current housing woes. 

Ameriprise Financial (AMP)

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Ameriprise Financial (NYSE:AMP) can help this age demographic with financial planning and critical steps to building wealth. 

So, if you’re a millennial and want to build a financial fortress that includes a house in the future, one of Ameriprise’s 10,258 financial advisors could help you create a financial plan to achieve your goals. 

You’d have to pay for the advice, but nothing worth having is free. Advice costs money. 

Secondly, if you hire an Ameriprise advisor, you probably should own AMP stock. And even if you don’t get a financial planner, the company is one of America’s leading financial planners, which is an excellent way to ride the industry’s growth. 

According to the Business Research Company, the global financial advisory market is expected to grow from $207.1 billion in 2023 to $239.5 billion in 2027, a compound annual growth rate of 3%. 

As for Ameriprise, its net revenue in Q3 of 2023 was $3.93 billion, 13% higher than Q3 2022. A good chunk of this growth was from advisory and financial planning fees. Year to date (YTD) through Sept. 30, the company’s adjusted operating earnings, excluding unlocking, was $2.43 billion, 18.7% higher than a year earlier. 

It’s an excellent stock to own for the long haul.    

Invitation Homes (INVH)

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If you can’t buy a home and are renting, you might do so through Invitation Homes (NYSE:INVH). It’s one of the largest owners of single-family rentals (SFRs) in America. 

As of Q3 of 2023, it owned 88,353 homes wholly or through joint ventures it manages. So, for example, in Atlanta, it owns 12,752 homes and manages another 440 homes through joint ventures. 

I don’t know how many single-family homes exist in Atlanta, but more than 13,000 sounds significant. If you live in Atlanta and rent one of their homes, riding alongside your landlord is an excellent way to benefit from your current housing situation. 

An example of why Invitation Homes can maintain an occupancy rate of nearly 97% is its scale. For instance, it is rolling out a bundled internet across its SFR footprint at a substantial discount to what you’d pay as an individual. That only happens because of its size. 

According to Invitation data, there are 45 million rental households in the U.S. SFRs account for 36%, or 16 million. That means it controls less than 1% of these 16 million units. 

Democrats in Congress are looking to reduce institutional ownership of SFRs. That would be a mistake. These large institutional investors look at the big picture 10-20 years down the road. Living in an Invitation Homes property protects against renovictions more than smaller SFR investors. 

Invitation’s annual dividend rate is $1.12, yielding 3.4%. Get paid to wait for its shares to return to the $40s.    

SoFi Technologies (SOFI)

SoFi Technologies, Inc logo with stock market chart background. is an American online personal finance company and online bank.
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Millennials account for 47% of this country’s outstanding student loan debt. The average millennial has an outstanding student loan balance of $42,600. Naturally, a majority of millennials believe student debt is a problem for younger people. 

SoFi Technologies (NASDAQ:SOFI) is a significant provider of student loans. As of Sept. 30, it had $6.04 billion in outstanding student loans, up from $5.38 billion in June.  The weighted average interest rate on those loans is 5.3%. It originated nearly $1 billion in student loans in Q3 2023, 101% higher than a year earlier and 133% higher than in Q2 2023. It’s a decent-sized loan portfolio for the fintech. 

However, compared to SoFi’s personal loans — $14.85 billion at the end of September, up from $12.75 billion a year earlier — they don’t compare. This is especially true when you consider that the average personal loan carries an interest rate more than double student loans at 13.8%. In Q3 2023, it originated nearly $3.9 billion in personal loans, more than 4x the amount of student loans originated in the third quarter. 

The only issue (and it’s a big one) with SOFI stock is that it still loses a lot of money on a GAAP basis. In the latest quarter, its losses were $277 million, more than 3x the amount from Q3 2022. 

It’s a lot riskier than AMP and INVH, but the rewards 10 years from now could make your student loans look like a blip on the radar by then. 

On the date of publication, Will Ashworth did not have (either directly or indirectly) any positions in the securities mentioned in this article. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer, subject to the InvestorPlace.com Publishing Guidelines.

Will Ashworth has written about investments full-time since 2008. Publications where he’s appeared include InvestorPlace, The Motley Fool Canada, Investopedia, Kiplinger, and several others in both the U.S. and Canada. He particularly enjoys creating model portfolios that stand the test of time. He lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia.


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