Rick Munarriz

The Motley Fool

Millennials already have to deal with hefty debt from college, an iffy job market, and growing up in an era where MTV no longer plays music videos, but now they're being blamed for holding back the real estate boom. Home builder adviser John Burns Consulting published details from a study earlier this month concluding that student loan payments will cost the housing industry 414,000 transactions this year that would have totaled $83 billion in sales.

Ouch. The ivory tower is crumbling at the foundation.

It's been widely assumed that mounting student debt is eating away at this otherwise buoyant housing market recovery. John Burns Consulting's study -- boiled down to a free one-pager for those that aren't paying customers that got the more thorough report -- attempts to quantify the impact.

How did the adviser arrive at $83 billion? Well, we start with the 5.9 million households under the age of 40 that are paying at least $250 in student loan debt, nearly triple the 2.2 million leveraged college grads in the same predicament back in 2005. We then get to the assumption that $250 earmarked for student loan debt every month reduces the buying power of a potential home buyer by $44,000. That's bad, and it's naturally worse depending on how much more than $250 a month some of these indebted students have taken on to pay back. That's less money they can commit to a mortgage. John Burns Consulting offers up that most households paying at least $750 a month in student loan have priced themselves out of the housing market entirely.

It gets worse

The study only looked at folks between the ages of 20-40. That's a pretty sizable lot, especially since 35% of all households in that age bracket have at least $250 a month in student debt. However, even John Burns Consulting concedes that there's "a big chunk of households over age 40 who have student debt" as well. It's not likely to be as bad, naturally, but it's all incremental at this point.

This report also happens to come at a time when the housing industry is starting to flinch after a couple of years of boom and bounce. Right now everything seems great. New home sales data released this past week showed the industry's highest monthly growth rate in more than six years. However, the near-term outlook is starting to get hazy.

Shares of KB Home (KBH) shed more than 5% of its value on Wednesday after reporting uninspiring quarterly results. Revenue and earnings fell short of expectations, and the same can be said about its number of closings and order growth. Earlier this month it was luxury bellwether Toll Brothers (TOL) setting an uneasy tone after posting a year-over-year decline in the number of contracts it signed during the period and an uptick in the cancellation rate for existing home orders.

It gets better

The student debt crisis is real, and the skyrocketing costs of obtaining a post-secondary education naturally open up the debate of its necessity. However, it's also important to remember that university grads are earning far more than those that don't attend college.

The median of annual earnings for young adults in 2012 was $46,900 for those with a bachelor's degree, $30,000 for those with just a high school degree or credential and $22,900 for those who did not complete high school. Those going on to grad school for advanced degrees -- and that's where student loans can really start to pile up -- are at $59,600 a year.

In other words, most college grads, and especially grad school graduates, are typically better off than those that didn't pursue higher education, even with the student loan albatross around their white-collared necks. The housing industry would be better off if colleges were cheaper or if student debt levels were lower, but the same can be said about purchasing power in general. At the end of the day, debt-saddled or not, the housing industry needs its college graduates.