Posted on 01/17/2011 9:21:45 AM PST by Gena Bukin
Here's what Generation Y doesn't want: formal living rooms, soaker bathtubs, dependence on a car.
In other words, they don't want their parents' homes.
Much of this week's National Association of Home Builders conference has dwelled on the housing needs of an aging baby boomer population. But their children actually represent an even larger demographic. An estimated 80 million people comprise the category known as "Gen Y," youth born roughly between 1980 and the early 2000s. The boomers, meanwhile, boast 76 million.
Gen Y housing preferences are the subject of at least two panels at this week's convention. A key finding: They want to walk everywhere. Surveys show that 13% carpool to work, while 7% walk, said Melina Duggal, a principal with Orlando-based real estate adviser RCLCO. A whopping 88% want to be in an urban setting, but since cities themselves can be so expensive, places with shopping, dining and transit such as Bethesda and Arlington in the Washington suburbs will do just fine.
"One-third are willing to pay for the ability to walk," Ms. Duggal said. "They don't want to be in a cookie-cutter type of development. ...The suburbs will need to evolve to be attractive to Gen Y."
Outdoor space is important-but please, just a place to put the grill and have some friends over. Lawn-mowing not desired.
(Excerpt) Read more at realestate.yahoo.com ...
Temporary until they have kids and want to send them outside to jump on the trampoline to get some quiet.
Yes. No mention of school quality/availability. Idiot real estate article.
That’s what I thought too. These young people are between age 20 and 30. Many haven’t yet had children or married or settled down. Give them a few years, and when children come along, they will want a suburban environment to raise their kids.
Anecdotal evidence for years has been that people move out of the cities when they have kids. Of those who remain in the city after having babies, many will move by the time the kids start school.
So I figure Generation Y will probably follow the same trends. As they have kids and get married, big numbers will want the traditional house with a backyard, similar to what they themselves grew up with.
Yes, the basements are enough.
when they breed, they will want good schools that you simply can’t get in the city center. As they age, they will want a little more space and a little less nightclub
When my wife and I were younger, I worked for the government (we are both retired now), and we moved quite a bit. We used to say, we didn’t buy houses, we bought school. That was our first criterion (we have 3 children, now grown, etc.). Later, my wife was a real estate broker for several years; I will have to show her this article and see what she thinks about it.
When Generation Y starts to age and gets the inevitable aches and pains, they’re not going to be so keen about walking everywhere.
“Temporary until they have kids and want to send them outside to jump on the trampoline to get some quiet.”
Right on.
When you’re 25, what you want in a home is dramatically different than when children arrive. Heck - even “urban areas” don’t seem so fun anymore. Forget about “walking” everywhere when it’s raining, 100+ degrees, or snowing and you’re towing 100 lbs of stupid baby stuff. :)
‘Tis hard to pack in all the groceries.
They’ll figure it out.
Oh yes, these people want to be living in the middle of the feral urban yutes...good luck with that.
Well, maybe this is a rejection of the Rat Race, or perhaps it’s just an example of reduced expectations, which, unfortunately, can be a self-fulfilling prophecy...but I definitely can see that younger people have a different set of values, and that’s not ALL bad.
no HOA period.
This is nothing but environmentalist propaganda. And if it is true, it's because they brainwashed the little buggers in government-propaganda schools.
I agree this is developers pushing the BS of people wanting to live in overpriced rabbit hutches.
It’s not that they are “self-denying” for the right reason,
they are “self-denying” because of their pagan, earth worshipping worldview,
whose only real intent, on their part, is to feel good about themselves as morally superior to others (conservatives/Christians) who “don’t care” about the erf.
I have said for years that the REALLY big houses (3500+sf) will become very much less desirable...cost of heating, lighting, maintenance will be part of the problem,....However...I do NOT believe Gen Y will not want a car....ha....skiing? hiking? travel? this is some loons idiot interpretation of the narcissitic child’s mind...they will grow up. PS I have 7 Gen Y’s in my family...WHEELS are VERY important.
Many suburban areas where a family of modest means can afford to live have almost as many feral yutes as the inner city, i.e. Prince George’s County, MD and Clayton County, GA. The same goes for parts of the outlying Houston metro, where I live.
There's a number of Gen-Y suburbs in towns neighboring mine. They're also hideously overpriced, centrally-planned, HOA-ruled communities that don't take kindly to non-Gen-Yers. All of them look like brand-new mining towns, all painted in friendly earth tones and all built using mixed-material steel panel and clapboard wood construction.
In a decade or two, after they've been through a few winters and the owners can't afford the expensive, custom up-keep due to the mixed-material construction, I predict they're going to look like shanty towns.
Good point that I didn't consider. Yes, having kids changes everything. As several other posters stated, good (and safe) school districts will take a higher priority.
I thought living rooms and dining rooms were replaced by ‘great rooms’ years ago. The article must be talking about real, sizable homes that still have those formal rooms, not typical new family homes.
My family fits this trend in more than one way.
1. We sold a 4,000 square footer in CA that has since declined by 400K in value.
2. We want to walk everywhere and live in a 90% walkable location in CO.
3. My gen Y kids are the same. One lives in Union County New Jersey, car-less. Another would live in Europe if she could, car-less. The third joined the Navy, to be car-less.
These young people are between age 20 and 30. Many haven’t yet had children or married or settled down. Many don't have jobs and live with Mommy and Daddy. But hey, they'll make it easy for my grandkids to clean-up (well, except for one of them).
“Here’s what Generation Y doesn’t want: formal living rooms, soaker bathtubs, dependence on a car. “
GenY are jsut stupid little kids that refused to grow up/
True, but there are affordable suburban areas without the feral yutes, especially in Houston metro. I would also say that the “almost” makes a difference. There is enough of a difference to matter in the risk posed by what comes out of Anacostia vs what comes out of Prince George’s.
I am 35, and only recently have been able to even contemplate buying a home. i work for myself, small business, etc etc.
The last thing on my mind is some gaudy McMansion in a subdivision that idiot boomers overpaid for and now is taxed to the hilt.
No thanks.
Hmmm... I am about the only person I know that actually took where they could walk into consideration before moving. With the exception of bars, walking really isn’t a consideration with my GenY relatives. The GenY’s I am acquainted with that own homes have all bought in established neighborhoods with older housing stock that needs some sort of updating. They are renovating as they go along to modernize and personalize their homes. They are all looking to be in their houses for several years.
...because it's oh-so-trendy and uber-cool.
Fast-forward a few years, when they have school-age kids and they get a look at the teeming hellholes of chaos known as urban schools. Suddenly, that I-heart-the-city cosmopolitanism isn't such a draw anymore.
joined the navy specifically TO BE car-less? In this society, being car-less is a significant empediment being a full citizen. Such situations make you dependent on the collective, and to the schedules of mass transit. Car-less is no way for an american to live.
Fixed.
just wait too, very young kids say what they think, and haven’t had their common sense destroyed yet. Wait till they visit the grandparents big fun house, with its big fun yard,,,and ask ‘ mommy,, why is their house better than ours? I like to be outside.’ lol
It was not the boomers that overpaid. Many sold into the bubble. It was the one's in the mid-30's that overpaid into the Mcmansions.
My house was built in 1972. It has a formal living room that we never use and a dining room that we use two days a year. If I built another house I would never have eithe rof these in the floor plan. I would have a media room though with a 50+ inch TV and surround sound.
I also would have a three car garage.
I must have raised the strangest kids ever! All three of my boys want to live way out in the country, have 4x4 trucks with a lifts on them, be able to hunt, fish, ride 4 wheelers and dirtbikes.
“One-third are willing to pay for the ability to walk,” “They don’t want to be in a cookie-cutter type of development. ...The suburbs will need to evolve to be attractive to Gen Y.”
My gen X friends said the exact same thing back in 1991:
1) Guess what...most are married, live in cookie cutter developments and drive everywhere.
2) others had enough of the rat race,went off the grid and moved into the country where it was SAFER to grow their weed...
3) Some moved overseas
4) I’m the LAST of a group of friends who still lives in a mostly Urban area.
My kids are 25 and 26. They are professional and married. Both are looking for homes and the only thing about this article that is true in my kids’ case is that they want to walk everywhere. They are looking for older traditional homes with character in the suburbs as are most of their friends.
You raised them to be those e-e-e-e-vil rugged individualist "Clingers" the liberals keep warning us about.
We have a formal dining room that has never been used except to store things off and on and we have been here 10+ years. The nice living room adjacent to it is used to host the Christmas tree and sometimes me doing a little photography. It is a waste of space.
Temporary until they have kids...
I seriously doubt if children are part of the equation for most.
If the millennials congregate in a metro area and stay there to raise their kids, don’t you think the quality of the schools will improve?
In the 80s, we lived in a wonderful residential section of DC. Our street was rowhouse after rowhouse populated by couples in their mid 30s to mid 40s with young children ... all under the age of 5. As the kids approached school age, one by one the families moved to MD or VA for the better schools. I’ve often wondered, had everyone stayed put, what effect all those families might have had on the local public school.
I have a feeling the millennials will stay put and demand change. It will be interesting to see what effect they have.
Ever notice, they loudly proclaim that they won’t just be cookie cutter people,,,,, while they march to the same train stations, from the same walking neighborhoods, where they all live in the same smallish condos, where they all think alike? Its really kinda comical.
This, we cannot allow. History is my witness.
Conformity in their non-comformity.
When the wife and I wanted a new house, the only thing offered were McMansions. Crappy design, questionable build quality, etc. So we had a house designed to our specs. Super enegery efficient, not because I care about global warming, or saving the whales or whatever, but because I had to heat it. Once the design was done, I couldn’t find anyone to build it because it used materials and techniques not common to the average, crappy contractor in my area. So I built it myself. Well, about 70% myself (myself meaning I actually did 70% of everything). I was 35 at the time and that was 2 years ago, so I guess I’m not technically in that ‘slacker’ generation. My point is, builders are not going to build these types of houses because they can’t squeeze out the profits than they can with crappy McMansions. If you want a house like that, you have to either build it yourself or prepare to pay 3x the sq. footage price of a McMansion.
We live in a large house built in the eighties on thirty acres. The area has developed significantly since we bought it, which drove the value to the point we would have to take a severe beating to sell it. My 20yo son wants no part of it. Too much upkeep and chores. My 16yo daughter says she would love to live here, but only if she gets married to an out doorsy farm boy type. At which point we would shuffle off to the nursing home.
Same argument has been made since the 70s. Remember when Brownstone-like townhomes and condominiums were the rage alternative to gated community HOAs?
The big environmental kick of the 90s was to make the US more European, build communities in suburban America like urban NYC or environmental policies of San Francisco Bay Area.
Urban sprawl became the next buzzword, but it wasn’t land development which promoted urban sprawl as much as it was the codification of all building codes throughout the US, leaning towards global policies.
Local policy was easier to implement by simply accepting national and international codes, instead of thinking them through on their own.
Now planning commissions in 4000 person townships have spread their borders by 50 miles to the next township in rural desert, but mandate a residence may not be used for business, when paupers barely have enough money to build a shack, unless they sign a 30-40 yr mortgage and relinquish freedom to an outside third parties, whose controlling interests are overseas.
Eerily similar to colonial life under the Empire.
I think the new homes that still had the formal rooms after that were probably larger than the typical 1,800 square foot, three bedroom homes in my area.
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