Millennials vs. Baby Boomers: Millennials Now the Largest Segment of Housing Market
Back in 1960, only one in five young adults between the ages of 18 and 34 were actually living with their parents. But, a Pew Research Center study found that in 2014, 32.1% of Millennials lived in their parents home.
“They’re very happy to stay at home and live off the bank of mom and dad and they put off having children, getting married, so everything was later,” Douglas Elliman CEO Dottie Herman told the FOX Business Network’s Maria Bartiromo.
But there has been a recent shift in Millennials’ impact on the housing market.
“The oldest Millennials are probably about 35 years old now, so they got married later, they’re having kids later and now they’re the largest segment of the housing market, they beat the Baby Boomers which was the largest, now they’re bigger,” said Herman.
Herman then explained the trends in the type of housing Millennials are buying.
“They love to buy, they like their life smaller, because they want to be by Starbucks and by urban and they don’t want one Starbucks (NASDAQ:SBUX), they want five. They don’t want to drive four and a half hours. They don’t want a city that rolls up at seven o’clock. So they’re buying closer to urban areas. They don’t want walls and they certainly don’t want bookcases,” Herman said.
On the state of the overall housing market, Herman said, “I would say it’s really a seller’s market. There is no inventory, none. I mean, people at my company are crying, there is nothing to sell, especially at that entry level, because those Millennials are coming out in big force.”