HIVE dean Dowell Myers's look at millennials points to not a change in preference but a much larger group of new home buyers to satisfy. An interactive chart shows the suburbs that are gaining their attention. Builders in those markets will need to pay attention to how to bring them the right product, as Myers covers in his HIVE panel presentation.
Thousands of millennials are moving to the suburbs of Riverside, Calif., San Antonio, Texas and Orlando, Fla. The burbs of those three metro areas saw the greatest growth in the number of adults aged 25 to 34 between 2010 and 2015, according to data from the Urban Land Institute provided to TIME.
"Riverside is a long way from Austin, Portland or Seattle in terms of coolness, but a lot of those things that make those cities attractive to the millennials — craft breweries, independent stores and restaurants — they're now springing up here," says local real estate developer Randall Lewis. "Historically, this is a marketplace people would come to for housing affordability, but now that a lot of millennials are postponing the buying decision, there's a strong apartment market out here."
The apartment growth in the Riverside metro area reflects a broader trend — researchers found "urban" areas outside of cities and "suburban" areas within cities when analyzing population density. In part thanks to those new living options, many suburban areas are gaining millennials. Of the 50 metro areas the Urban Land Institute analyzed, the vast majority saw an increase in suburban millennials from 2010 to 2015, while just seven saw a decline.
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