Millennials Are Buying in the ‘Burbs

Apparently, the nation’s suburbs have become the destinations of choice for Millennial homebuyers.

A report from online real estate firm Zillow finds almost half of millennial homeowners live in the suburbs.

The majority stay in the same city when they buy a home, revealing their home-buying preferences now that they are the largest generational group in the housing market.

According to the 2016 Zillow Group Report on Consumer Housing Trends, millennials made up 42 percent of home buyers last year, more than any other generation, with most of them buying for the first time.

Millennials, those ages 18-34, associate homeownership with the American Dreamii and believe that buying a home is a good financial investment, even more so than Generation X and baby boomers.

But until recently, they were delaying homeownership, and it was difficult to know where they would actually purchase homes when they started buying. The median age of a first-time home buyer is 33 years old, compared to 29 a generation ago.

Among the Millennial home-buying trends discovered:

Almost 50 percent of millennial homeowners live in the suburbs, while 33 percent live in an urban neighborhood and just 20 percent live in a rural area.
Of the millennial buyers who moved in the past year, 64 percent stayed in the same city and just 7 percent moved to a different state.
When millennials become homeowners, they skip the traditional starter home by choosing larger properties with higher prices: They pay a median price of $217,000 for a home that is about 1,800 square feet, similar in size to what older generations buy.
Millennial home buyers share many preferences with their grandparents’ generation, both choosing homes with shared community amenities and considering townhouses at higher rates than other generations.

Millennials make up almost 30 percent of the population in San Diego and Austin, Texas. Los Angeles, San Antonio and Columbus, Ohio also have large millennial populations, over 25 percent.

That is real buying power.