Millennial, HGTV-approved
What are young homebuyers looking for? Move-in ready, open floor plans
They’re here.
Millennials, a generation now larger than the baby boomers, were battered by the financial crisis as they started their careers and delayed some of the milestones that accompany homeownership, such as marrying and starting a family. But in 2018, millennials represented the largest cohort of home buyers at 37%, according to the National Association of Realtors’ 2019 Home Buyers and Sellers Generational Trends Report.
“Millennial home buyers are often looking for a lot at first and then they’re scaling back as they start searching for a home because of high prices and the limited selection of homes in most markets,” says Danielle Hale, chief economist for Realtor.com.
Millennials are not likely to compromise on the condition of a home, which is in part because of their lack of experience as homeowners, says Hale.
Brian Kee, 36, and his wife, Eliana Kee, 33, purchased a three-bedroom, townhouse-style condo for $515,000 in the Shirlington area of Arlington, Virginia, upgrading from the nearby condo they owned for six years now that they have a child.
“The single-family homes we saw were small, needed a lot of work and sold fast,” said Brian.
“For us, the neighborhood and commute were more important than the size of the place,” he said. “We also like that it was move-in ready and we didn’t have to do any work.”
“Millennials want almost instant HGTV-approved living,” says real estate agent Michelle Sagatov. “They’re not usually willing to put in elbow grease on making something their own through a renovation. As long as it’s on trend enough, they’re happy to just bring their furniture and their toothbrush and move in.
Understanding the priorities and preferences of millennial buyers is important to developers and to home sellers who want to target buyers in that age range.
“Buyers don’t want to have to do any renovation, especially not right away,” Sagatov says.
“As a whole, millennials are very interested in a sense of community and place a priority on the neighborhood,” says Kerron Stokes, a real estate agent with Re/ Max Leaders in Denver.
Lauren Demeter, 31, and her husband, Landon Rordam, 32, who bought a single-family house in Arlington earlier this year, said they quickly realized their initial idea of purchasing a fixer-upper would take too much time and money.
“We had been renting a 670-square-foot, one-bedroom apartment for years and wanted more space,” Rordam says. “The amount of money it would cost to rent something larger was too much, so we decided it was time to buy.”
The couple initially wanted a fixer-upper to invest in, but they decided to look for something that was well-maintained and didn’t require any work.
“We found a 2,600square-foot Tudor-style home with a detached garage that had already been converted into an office on the main level with a guest