Home Buying Process Starts with a Major Decision

By Ryan Dosen

The first step in your home buying process isn’t driving around your ideal neighborhood looking for “For Sale” signs. It isn’t going online to run a search on the latest properties to hit the market. It isn’t sitting down with your Realtor to discuss the best homes in the area. It isn’t getting pre-approved for a mortgage. It may actually be choosing your college major.

Of course, not everyone will go to college. Nor do they need to in order to buy a home. And of course, different people will take different paths with the same college degree, some more lucrative than others. But the bottom line is that, on average, your choice of degree puts you on a path to generally make a certain amount of money. Your choices and work ethic can certainly alter your path and future income, but the fact remains that your choice of college degree significantly impacts your future income and the home(s) you will eventually purchase.

It is in this way that your choice of college degree could be said to be the first step in your home buying process. This is all very logical and unsurprising; however, most 18-year olds are probably not thinking specifically about buying a home when they are choosing a major.

 

College Majors and Home Affordability

More than 300 college degrees were analyzed by PayScale and Realtor.com, and engineering majors dominate the top of the list of incomes and mid-career (10+ years) maximum affordable home prices. Petroleum engineers sit at the top of the mountain with a starting salary of $101,000 and a mid-career salary of $168,000. According to Realtor.com, this translates into a mid-career maximum affordable home price of $744,000 for petroleum engineers.

Engineering majors sweep the remainder of the top-12 majors, with the only exception being another number-crunching major: Actuarial Mathematics (#3 overall). These majors tend to have a starting salary anywhere from $58,800 to $71,500 and mid-career salaries ranging from $109,000 to $121,000. These numbers translate to mid-career maximum affordable home prices of $483,000 to $536,000.

Early Childhood Education majors fared the worst. With starting salaries of $30,300 and mid-career salaries of $38,000, individuals with Early Childhood Education degrees are looking at a mid-career maximum home affordability of just $168,000.

 

Do What You Like and Make the Most of It

Whether you have a college degree or not, you shouldn’t let that degree or lack thereof define what you are capable of achieving. The great motivational minds of our time generally say that if you want to accomplish big things in this life, you should focus your efforts in an area about which you are personally passionate. You will work harder, be better, and generally find a way to offer more to the world if you truly care about what you are doing.

I honestly do not like the study about which I am writing because I do not really agree with the survey’s designed takeaway. You do not have to be an engineer to make a lot of money or have a nice house. You may also get an engineering degree and not even wind up being an engineer. I have a degree in Computer Engineering and I now help people buy and sell homes.

Very successful people are usually truly fantastic at something. It’s much easier to be truly fantastic at something if you deeply care about that something. Find what you care about, dive in head first, and become one of the truly special people in your industry. Do this, and if more money or a bigger house is a goal for you, you can accomplish it with any degree or background. But remember that complacency can be the dream killer. The study at issue focused on averages. Averages are important to help you learn the general rules of the game. But averages need not define you and your life.

 

– Ryan Dosen manages The Wayne Megill Real Estate Team of Keller Williams – Brandywine Valley in West Chester, PA. Contact Ryan Dosen to inquire about buyer or seller representation or to learn more about a career in real estate by emailing ryan@waynemegillteam.com or calling 610-399-0338.

This article was published by 21st Century Media and the Daily Local News (West Chester, PA). To read this article on the the newspaper’s site, please visit the Daily Local News.

To view all of Ryan Dosen’s 21st Century Media real estate columns, visit http://www.dailylocal.com/search?text=dosen.