Dive Brief:

• Chase is encouraging its credit card customers to open a mortgage through the bank by offering 100,000 reward points, valued at up to $1,500, CNBC reported. 

• In 2016, borrowers 35 years old or younger accounted for 36% of new Chase home mortgages, an increase of 16 percentage points from the year before. 

• Capital One, Wells Fargo and Quicken Loans have also offered customer rewards for taking out mortgage and home equity loans, including air miles and rebates.

Dive Insight:

Though millennials have experienced many barriers to homeownership, they represent the largest group of homebuyers and in January took a 45% share of all purchase loans compared to 42% a year earlier.

According to Ellie Mae’s latest Millennial Tracker, millennial borrowers continue to close loans faster and faster: In March, the average closing time was 43 days, compared to 44 days in February.

Zillow recently acknowledged millennials’ desire to understand home expenses with the launch of RealEstate.com, a home-listing website targeted at younger, first-time buyers that delivers search results based on preferred down payment and monthly mortgage amounts. 

In its listings, Zillow’s website presents an “all-in” monthly rate that considers the various costs of homeownership. This approach uses a monthly timeframe similar to that of renting — something many first-time buyers are familiar with.

It’s not just credit card points and other rewards that big banks are using to encourage new buyers to take out mortgage loans with them. Banks including Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo have recently rolled out 3% down programs to lower one of the biggest barriers to owning a home in today's high-price environment: saving up for a down payment.

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