$1,310 doesn’t get you a lot these days.

When it comes to real estate, it gets you absolutely nothing. It’s not even enough to cover typical closing costs on a home purchase.

Yet $1,310 is the amount the average Boulder County millennial has saved toward a future home, according to a recent report from online rental marketplace ApartmentList.com.

At the current rate of savings that more than 30,000 renters aged 18 to 35 self-reported in the survey, it would take 38 years to save up a 20 percent down payment on a home here.

The disconnect in saving habits and the real cost of buying a home was shocking, said study author Andrew Woo, data scientist at Apartment List — particularly among older millennials (27 to 35) who are more likely to want to buy within three to five years.

“More than 30 percent of older millennials have not saved anything, and 70 percent or more are saving less than $200 a month,” Woo said. “What happens to those cities when these millennials decide to settle down?”

Biggest obstacle: Affordability

Affordability is a problem for millennials all over the U.S. as wages have stagnated and the cost of education has left many with an average $25,000 in student loan debt per person.

But in pricey Boulder County (the seventh most expensive market for single family homes, according to data from the National Association of Realtors), the average renter income ($35,993 in 2014) is miles away from the income needed to purchase a median-priced home here at $495,000.

Assuming zero debt, a 10 percent down payment of $49,500 and a sub-4 percent interest rate (a situation very few millennials find themselves in), a household would need an income of at least $73,000 to make the nearly $3,000 a month mortgage, insurance and tax payments and still fall under the 45 percent debt-to-income ratio most lenders use as their top-end requirement.

Woo’s data suggests millennials do want to buy — and soon. Seventy-eight percent of Boulder County respondents want to purchase within the next few years but affordability is their biggest obstacle: 60 percent say cost is keeping them from home ownership.

A typical condo or townhome — the most financially attainable product for most younger buyers — in the county costs $340,250. At those prices, a 20 percent down payment is just north of $68,050, or 52 times what millennials have currently saved.

Despite that bleak picture, that demographic is buying homes in Boulder County. Lenders and real estate professionals say about half of those currently buying and shopping for houses are millennials.

That’s in part because very few buyers put down the full 20 percent anymore, said Chris Oxley, a mortgage loan officer with Elevations Credit Union.

With all the federal and local programs available, “3.5 percent down gets you into a home (on an Federal Housing Administration loan) and a 5 percent down payment gets you a regular conventional loan.”

Oxley said fewer than half his millennial clients put 20 percent down, a trend that’s occurring nationally.

The median down payment for millennial buyers nationally is 7 percent, according to a recent report from the National Association of Realtors — despite the median cost of a millennial’s first home ($187,400) being nominally more affordable than in Boulder County.

Woo said that, overall, millennials in the Boulder metro area seem a little more conscious of what it takes to buy a house here.

“(They are) more well educated, they have a higher income and expect to purchase much more expensive homes than other millennials,” he said. “More so in Boulder than other places, the decision to delay home ownership seems to be a conscious one.”

“It would take a miracle”

Still, local professionals say they have noticed an increase in the woefully unprepared first-time buyer.

“There’s two distinct groups of buyers” right now in Boulder County, said real estate agent Josh Hunter with St. Vrain Realty in Longmont.

There are couples with two decent incomes who have saved tens of thousands for a 5 to 10 percent down payment, with money left over for expenses or repairs. They get conventional loans with low interest rates.

The remainder are on the opposite end: they barely qualify for an FHA loan. If they can swing a 3.5 percent down payment, they need grants or other assistance to cover closing costs.

“We don’t see what I used to think was the more common middle ground,” Hunter said. “It’s split almost down the middle” of those who are well-prepared and those scraping by.

At a local bar on a Thursday night, the split was evident among members of an after-work kickball league.

Jamie Javier, 27, has saved around $20,000 and is actively looking for a home — though outside Boulder County, where she currently rents.

What she’s saved, “isn’t enough for 20 percent on anything here,” Javier said. “I’ve started looking in Glenwood Springs. Looking in Boulder got a little too heartbreaking.”

Just across the table is 28-year-old Jessica Ebert, another Boulder renter — though in a vastly different place in relation to potential home ownership.

“It’s not even on my radar,” Ebert said. “Last year, my dad said, ‘Why don’t you buy a place?’ and I just laughed.”

Ebert, who rents a home with three other people, said most of her money goes to monthly bills and paying down other debt. With little to no savings, she has no illusions about being able to purchase property in the area.

“It would have to be some sort of miracle,” she said.

Location, location, location

Many of Ebert’s and Javier’s friends echoed their belief that buying a home would mean leaving Boulder County behind. But universally, they said location was more important than the size and quality of home they could get for their money.

“I’ve lived in the middle of nowhere my whole life, where everybody’s fine driving 30 miles to get anywhere,” said Ebert, a Buffalo, N.Y., native, “but once you live somewhere you can walk everywhere, there’s no going back.”

In the National Association of Realtors report, millennials were most influenced by the quality of the neighborhood (63 percent) and convenience to jobs (60 percent) than any other factors.

In inventory-strapped Boulder County, millennials that won’t compromise on location often compromise on the condition of the home, buying places in need of major repairs and replacements.

Anne Wrobetz, 24, bought a Longmont home with her boyfriend, 26, last August after a brief search. Written into the contract is a requirement to replace the roof within three years so that it can be adequately insured, at a cost of about $10,000.

It will be a stretch on their budgets, Wrobetz said, but “fortunately, we have three years to figure that out.”

It’s still a better deal than renting, she added. An impending 35 percent rent increase was Wrobetz’s motivation for moving. Even with the added costs of home insurance, mortgage insurance and repairs, owning is cheaper than renting would have been.

High local rents are another factor impacting millennials ability to save. More than half (54.6) of renters in Boulder County spend more than 30 percent on rent, according to an October report by ApartmentList.

Bank of mom and dad

Wrobetz was able to scrape together a 10 percent down payment on her $235,000 home with the help of her family — an increasingly common occurrence.

Nationally, 23 percent of millennial home buyers used a gift from a relative — typically their parents — as the main source of their down payment. There are no parallel statistics locally, but real estate professionals say the percentage is much higher here.

“Four out of every 10 millennials probably get assistance from a loved one, either cash or borrowed from a parent’s 401k,” said Longmont’s Hunter. Interestingly, though, “only one out of every 10 starts with assistance” from their families.

Help usually comes once buyers get out into the market and take a look around, Hunter said. Multi-offer situations push the price way over asking, and offers with less than 20 percent down fall to the bottom on the pile.

“Last week, I put in a bid on a property that was listed for $270,000. I offered $300,000 with a conventional loan. There were 28 other offers, and we lost.”

In situations like that being repeated all over the county, “an injection of $20,000 from mom and dad makes or breaks the difference.”

Still, every once in awhile, someone gets lucky.

Jamey Chapin, 34, bought her north Boulder condo from her then-landlord — for $20,000 over her original offer.

Still, Chapin said, it was worth it to achieve something almost as rare as a $1 billion startup: Becoming a millennial homeowner in the city of Boulder.

Recently, her storage unit flooded, a potentially costly development that, just a few months ago, would have been someone else’s responsibility.

“Welcome to home ownership,” she said.

Shay Castle: 303-473-1626, castles@dailycamera.com or twitter.com/shayshinecastle