With a focus on building careers in large cities, Millennials are hesitant to start laying roots in a more suburban neighborhood. Because the American economy is driven by families and home buying, the delay in marriage and owning a home has contributed to the slowness of the coming housing boom.
The average age to marry has risen to above 28 years old and more and more children are being born to college-educated, two-income couples.
William Smead of Smead Capital Management notes that “many Millennials have removed themselves from their hometown and their college town via their employment and the lateness of marriage,” but because of this they can “estimate that the current new homebuilding pace of 629,000 units in 2016 will grow to a 1.5 million unit run-rate within five years. This would truly be a boom and could carry the U.S. economy along with it.”
In 5 to 10 years when Millennials start settling down and demand for housing increases, we’ll begin to see a very different landscape for the housing market.
Read the original Business Insider article here. And leave your comments in the comments section. Do you think Millennials will be buying new homes in suburbs in the next 5-10 years? Does this cohort hold the housing promise so many think, or will they be a generation of renters?
