Millennials and Housing: Separating Fantasy From Reality

There’s a running debate in our office about how different Millennials really are from the rest of us, in my case, Generation X. Certainly there are differences: their phobia of voice calls, their online exhibitionism, their openness on social issues like gay marriage.

But ascribing categorical differences to an entire generation of people made up of 74.8 million Americans—the most diverse in our history—has always made me a little uneasy. 

And then there are outright myths. Like their housing preferences.

We’ve been told Millennials are moving to big cities, leaving behind their native suburbs and the idea of single-home ownership, never to return, a generation of renters for life. Wow, that really is different.

Then something happened: older Millennials started entering their 30’s.

So are they flocking to cities?

Recent articles in Forbes, Trulia.com and the Wall Street Journal, are showing that, at least with housing, Millennials might not be so different after all. Here are a few highlights:

• Yes, there was a net migration to cities between 2007 and 2012 of two million people aged 15 to 29. But that amounts to only 3% of all Millennials.1
• Most of this in-migration came from nonurban (rural) areas outside the major cities, not the suburbs.1
• Research conducted by Frank Magid and Associates finds that 2 out of 3 Millennials feel suburbs were the “ideal place to live” versus cities.
• A survey by Better Homes and Gardens found that 75% of Millennials point to homeownership as a “key indicator of success.”
• A survey by the online banking company TD Bank found that 84% of renters aged 18-34 intend to buy a home.

Why haven’t Millennials bought a home yet?

It could be because Millennials are waiting longer to get married and have kids as a result of the Great Recession job market, student debt, and the overall trend of women having children later in life that started with their parents, the Boomers.

To me, what’s more interesting is the willingness of folks to believe this myth in the first place. Did they really think Millennials were going to give up having children altogether so they could live in cities forever?

How does a myth like this persist? Who is perpetuating it? 

Here’s my guess: we are.

As marketers, we’re constantly looking for actionable differences—things you can build a competitive advantage around, both for our clients and ourselves. It sometimes leads us into divining differences that either don’t exist in the real world or can be explained another way. 

We’re also overwhelmingly white, urban, educated and middle/upper middle class. In other words, we’re not like most of our countrymen. The effect is a consistency and conformity of thought, or lack thereof.

For instance, I know a guy who graduated college during the recession. He was one of the few people in his peer group to get a respectable job after graduation. He left that job shortly thereafter to move to a big city, got another job, but left after a couple years to do something he found more personally meaningful. These days you’ll find him volunteering much of his time. He’s pretty much glued to his smartphone and technology generally. 

The typical Millennial? 

Nope. That person was/is 45-year-old me. My 24-year-old co-worker next to me just bought a house—something I didn’t even attempt until I was well into my 30’s. My point is, every generation since at least the 60’s has followed a similar path. It’s just what people do in their 20’s—at least within my socio-economic group, something I suspect has more influence than generational designation on actual behavior.

Because of its sheer size, some folks have pinned their hopes on the Millennial generation, that in fact it will be different, more tolerant, less materialistic, more concerned with the environment, less self-centered. 

Some of this will, or already has, come to pass. But I suspect their generation will respond to the major milestones of life as many other generations have. Like the Woodstock generation. Like the Slackers of my generation. Because those milestones don’t really change. Only we do.

1. Forbes, The Geography Of Aging: Why Millennials Are Headed To The Suburbs