At the heart of every successful real estate sector lies the people who drive the value of each property. Economic, regulatory and market factors may ebb and flow, but it is the tide of demographic shifts that underpins the long-term prospects of real estate investing. It is instructive to examine the behaviors of millennials and baby boomers, who represent the two largest generations in history, at 72.1 million and 71.6 million Americans, respectively, according to U.S. Census data tabulated by Pew Research Center. In this piece, we examine how these vastly different cohorts are making a significant impact on the demand for emerging real estate subsectors, based on how they live, work and shop.

Residential: riding the lifecycle

Ranging in age from 26 to 41, millennials are actively moving through major milestones in their young adult lifecycle, impacting the markets they engage with along the way. In the early 2000s, the first wave of this cohort gra