The school of thought that says millennials are coming of family-starting age and looking for houses in the suburbs may be a bit premature, according to this analysis from Business Insider:
It's tough being a millennial. Millennials are accused of killing entire industries: casual dining chains that should have been killed off by a prior generation, beer (sez Goldman Sachs), napkins, homeownership, Harley Davidson, banks, diamonds, and brick-and-mortar retailers. OK, things change. But there's one thing the largest US generation ever is not killing off: urban centers. They're flocking to them, in some case they're gentrifying them - for better or worse - and they're often paying sky-high rents.
For example, in downtown Los Angeles, the two adjacent ZIP codes 90014 and 90013 (which includes Skid Row) are being rapidly gentrified with a high-rise building boom. And the millennial population has soared over a five-year period, by 91% in ZIP code 90014 and by 60% in ZIP code 90013. These two ZIP codes have the fastest-growing population of millennials among any large ZIP codes in the 30 biggest US cities, according to a report and data by Yardi's RentCafé.
The population data - based on the Census Bureau American Community Survey's five-year population estimates - shows that ZIP codes in or near downtowns are sought out by millennials. In many of those ZIP codes, millennials are now the majority of the population.