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Millennials Moving to Suburbs Will Change Economic Development
- jdlyga 9y agoWhen I lived in the subburbs in long island, millenials felt pretty left behind. Home prices were over a million dollars with very little opportunities for renting. Most people either rented semi-legal basement apartments or lived with their parents. It wasn't till I moved to New York City that I started to see people my age doing well. It's a very safe city, has a huge culture of renting, and with higher wages. Unless you have the money to afford a home, it's better to live in a city and rent.
- notyourwork 9y agoI don’t agree in long term it’s better to rent. Your rent builds no equity with in long term isn’t a good financial decision. (In my opinion.)
- akgerber 9y agoThere are a lot of factors — that math only works out if you're not planning on moving much and owning is cheaper than renting, which it often isn't. Plus we're at a pretty high point in the real estate cycle right now. This is a classic: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/upshot/buy-rent-calculator.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/upshot/buy-rent-cal...
- secabeen 9y agoIf you want to dig into more complicated situations, I really like this one: https://michaelbluejay.com/house/rentvsbuy.html https://michaelbluejay.com/house/rentvsbuy.html It's much harder to find on Google today than it was 8 years ago.
- s2g 9y agoThere is that whole thing about having a place to live since a downpayment is massive. I dunno, maybe homeless wouldn't be so bad.
- majormajor 9y agoThere are a few places in the country where the immediate suburbs are very different, cost-wise, than everywhere else. Mainly NY, LA, and SF. You'd have to go really far there to find sub-500K housing. It's different elsewhere.
- magduf 9y agoDepending on the city, buying a house is a big liability too, and just doesn't make any financial sense unless you're sure you're going to be there for at least 8 years. What if you get a new job on the other side of town? What if you want to move in with your significant other, and they work somewhere else? As a renter, it's not that hard for you to pack up and move to a more convenient location so your commute isn't so horrible (or to have a more equitable commute between you and your partner), but when you own a house, you're going to lose a huge amount of money just by selling it thanks to ridiculous closing costs.
- icebraining 9y agoYou can also rent the house you bought if you need to move (particularly if you're just moving to another part of town). Although that requires decent savings, since you can't depend on the rent coming every month.
- ryanmarsh 9y agoOr you could turn the home into an income producing asset by renting it. Invest a small amount in some repairs and paint, do it yourself. Light fixtures and doorknobs go a long way. Rent it for more than your costs, or just at your costs and earn the equity over time.
- vonmoltke 9y ago> What if you get a new job on the other side of town? For starters, I'm not moving. I hate moving and find it very stressful and disruptive.
- tjwds 9y ago> As millennials age into their 30s and homeownership is on the rise, demographics are now moving against urban landlords. > We know how and what to build when we're dealing with an influx of young urban renters. But what will they want as they age into their next phase of life, and how can policy makers meet their needs? A lot of this article seems to be pinned on an unwritten idea that the suburbs are where you go when you want to grow up. This seems like a bit of a trap for developers and speculators, to me: at least in the city I live in, there has been some focus on urban development to provide services for families of all sizes.
- rayiner 9y agoThe dealbreaker is schools. Without getting into a fight about why urban schools are dysfunctional, they are, and that will drive families to suburbs. While millenials are having kids somewhat later, it doesn’t look like there will be a dramatic drop in the percentage of millenials who will ultimately have kids.
- seanmcdirmid 9y agoDepends on the city. Millenials could also push for changes and upgrades in urban school districts.
- nervousvarun 9y agoThey could, and some will...but the majority won't have time/inclination with the obligations of work/family and will just move to the suburbs (if history is any indication). This is basically been the case for decades in the U.S.
- seanmcdirmid 9y agoIt could be like that, but the new generation has proven to be very different from the baby boomers, so who knows. Other countries seem to get by just fine with living in cities and having kids.
- rhexs 9y agoWith housing inventory at an all time low, and the market at higher highs than peak bubble in 2006 (in most markets), this doesn't seem like a problem anyone needs to worry about at the moment. Perhaps the solution to the 2006 mortgage crisis shouldn't have been to immediately and urgently reinflate the bubble. Oh well. Same story, different year. Maybe the fed can finally play with negative interest rates during the next downturn!
- josephpmay 9y agoOR millennials are moving to the exurbs not because they want to, but because cities are too expensive when you have a family and don’t want roommates. Much of the rest of the world is happy to raise families in cities... why not here? The solution should be to build infrastructure and improve the schools in urban cores, not invest in suburbs.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- mistahchris 9y agoYeah, in my city, people my age (late 20s, early 30s) aren't moving to the suburbs because they want to, but because they're forced to by the insanely high cost of living in the urban area compared to the wages offered here. From what I gather, this is true in pretty much every city in the US that I know people in.
- aaron-lebo 9y agoDon't doubt your experience at all (while driving today was going back and forth on whether I'd prefer moving back into the city or further into the suburbs, and honestly not sure), but there's lots of people who just like the suburbs. Yeah, there's lots of wasted space and it's very residential, but that wasted space is nice in a way. It's a much quieter place. Especially when raising kids, unless you can move into the nicest neighborhoods, the burbs are an easy option for many people and not just due to money. I've lived in a very urban area and I miss it but I really don't. It's harder to get away there. I don't mind helping homeless people, but dealing with aggressively mentally ill people every other time you step out the door or drug addicts screaming at each other in the middle of the night is not something that's enjoyable. That happens in the city, I've never experienced it the suburbs. It just seemed like you always had to be on alert. Maybe that says a lot about how we handle social problems, but it can't be easily discounted.
- gipp 9y agoYou're not really contradicting the article? They address that possibility and don't really ascribe a particular cause: > If people are moving to suburbs and exurbs because the urban cores are "full," with high rents and home prices, then the question becomes: Do politicians fight anti-development interests like homeowners who have sought to block construction in their neighborhoods?
- ixtli 9y agoIt's funny because this article thinks we can find jobs outside of cities...
- chrisseaton 9y ago> It's funny because this article thinks we can find jobs outside of cities... But it's an article about living in suburbs... suburbs of cities... where the jobs are. You can catch a train (or take a company bus or drive in the US I guess) from a suburb into the city for your job. That's what suburbs are.
- ghaff 9y agoAnd that's even assuming the jobs are actually in the city. While tech jobs in urban cores have increased in recent years, in a lot of places the majority are still out in the exurbs and suburbs--including in the case of the Bay Area. (The difference being that in regions like Massachusetts, housing prices are a lot more reasonable in many towns outside of the urban core.)
- notfromhere 9y agoI mean that's kinda a given about the Bay Area. Outside of SF, its just suburbia on steroids
- ixtli 9y agoI did exactly this for a year and my quality of life suffered so badly that I nearly had a panic attack so i just sucked it up and moved into the city. I mean look: I like living in the city but when I consider that I could eject and live in the country i continue to encounter the reality that i would be disconnected from the majority of my community and the most interesting and well paying jobs.
- chrisseaton 9y agoI can't understand why people are on this site are so allergic to the suburbs. What is it that made you have such a bad quality of life that you had a panic attack? Why can't you have a job in the city if you live in the suburbs?
- arcaster 9y agoAs someone on the younger end of what seems to be considered "millennial" (graduating from uni in May), I hope this means cheaper rent in cities like New York, Austin and Boston?
- cbhl 9y agoTo the contrary. Rent in the cities has plateaued, but mostly capped by the amount that banks and tech companies are willing to pay new grads.
- lambda_lover 9y agoI know that rents in those places has plateaued, but there's so much demand that even a steady outstream of new parents might not make a dent in housing prices. NYC rents dipped recently for the first time in years, but as somebody who's currently shopping around for apartments in NYC, the changes aren't really substantial to the end renter.
- arcaster 9y agoAt least it's slightly more reasonable than Bay Area prices... haha
- lazerpants 9y agoIt appears to me, based on looking last year and this year, that the L train shutdown is starting to distort rents in desirable neighborhoods outside of Wburg. People are fleeing Wburg in favor of places like LIC, Astoria, and Downtown Brooklyn before L service is suspended. Probably a great time to look in Wburg if you can commute via ferry or stay in the neighborhood though. Edit: I should add that people aren't just leaving Wburg, anywhere along the L line is impacted. I suspect it's creating a rental price floor in other parts of the city, at all price points.
- istorical 9y agoAs someone whose current lease on the L doesn't end until this October/November, this scares me. I've been wondering how many 100's of dollars average rent for a bedroom will rise (100, 200, 300?) in the other BK neighborhoods that young, childless, salaried people tend to live. I've found that one of the biggest benefits of NYC is the salary to rent ratio (compared to other major American cities) if you're OK with roommates and a 30-45 minute commute on the subway. I wonder how much the L shutdown changes the math.
- roymckenzie 9y agoI lived in San Francisco for the past seven years, but moved to Missoula, Montana because living in the city and even surrounding places like Oakland, South Bay was increasingly way too expensive. I count myself lucky that I am self-employed and work in an industry that I can easily do remote work as the job prospects in Missoula mostly center around low-wage service work. At the end of the day, I moved to Missoula so I can do my part as a millennial and start buying diamonds again.
- TomK32 9y agodiamonds? Is that what they call avocados in Montana?
- roymckenzie 9y agoThere's avocados in them thar hills!
- DubiousPusher 9y agoDoesn't hurt that Missoula is a great little town.
- roymckenzie 9y agoIt is a great town. Very friendly people. Beautiful valley. Really looking forward to summer! :)
- op00to 9y agoAre you afraid that you won't be able to find quality remote work at some point? As much as I'd love to go far off into the woods, my job prospects - even as a confirmed, life-long remote employee - are so much better being close to an urban center with solid transportation connections to major cities.
- roymckenzie 9y agoI wouldn't say Missoula is far off into the woods, but maybe that's just where you want to be; sorry if I misunderstood you. I think about remote work drying up often, but I think if remote work dried up for me it would mean there was a major shift in the industry, so I don't think anyone would be safe from that. Being near an urban center would mean that you could possibly pound the pavement for a new job in a major city a lot easier. If the industry changes massively, will being near an urban center mean there will still be a lot of jobs there? Maybe? Maybe not.
- Karrot_Kream 9y agoImportant to note that Urban areas continue to grow, but the rate at which they've been growing is decreasing, while suburban growth rates are increasing again. To me, the comparison feels a bit dodgy, as a much smaller change in suburban population will move the growth rate for those areas compared to Urban areas, due to lower populations, and Urban centers continue to grow, just slower than before.
- majormajor 9y agoI don't think that's right: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-suburban-are-big-american-cities/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-suburban-are-big-am... > Nationally, 26 percent of Americans described where they live as urban, 53 percent said suburban and 21 percent said rural. (This comes close to the census estimate that 81 percent of the population is urban if “urban” is understood to include suburban areas.) Of course, that's response-based, but if you look at the character of most American cities, there's very little truly dense urban areas. Though even the definition of suburban itself can cover a wide range, since "suburban" Los Angeles has a lot of 8-10K person/sqmile areas and "suburban" Dallas generally is more like 4K, and then others are even less.
- dahdum 9y agoI don’t understand how the article can bemoan high rents but then also say urban cores are overbuilt? Overbuilding drives down rents, which isn’t great for developers but not exactly a problem for the rest of us. Miami is going through the same, so many condo towers are going up it’s suppressing rents - in the most expensive area of the city. Yes, they are premium units, but the supply drives down rents across the board.
- DubiousPusher 9y agoI don't think they're saying that the cities are overbuilt in the short term but could be overbuilt in the long term. It can take decades for a large apartment building to show an ROI. A significant decline in renters, even over 10-15 years can leave large development projects without the money to maintain the buildings and grounds. Gross looking buildings of course struggle even more to attract renters and a neighborhood can go into a downward spiral in as little as a decade.
- Steltek 9y agoI'm guessing it's because many cities still strangle development. "Overbuilt" could be concluded from a lack of feasible projects within a city. There's also the nebulous problem of investors buying units in new luxury buildings but not occupying or renting them. This could preserve high rent prices as new units are not being faithfully put into the housing pool. Stories about that pop up often but don't seem quantified as an issue.
- siruncledrew 9y agoAs an aside, I wish articles would just put the age ranges in the title for the group they are referring to, rather than a blanket term like "millennials". For example, if millennials [0] includes anyone 22-37, the image in a person's mind of "a millennial" could greatly vary from someone fresh out of college to a a young couple with a baby. That creates a disconnect from actuality if the article is referring to a specific subset in their late 20s-early 30s. [0]: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/03/01/defining-generations-where-millennials-end-and-post-millennials-begin/ http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/03/01/defining-gen...
- RhysU 9y agoUp to folks with teenagers, you mean. Many couples have more than a baby by age 37.
- niftich 9y agoYet another article which attempts to use Millennials as a homogeneous cohort to paint some broad-strokes policy questions to ponder. In fact, the generational cohorts are significantly less relevant than income [1] in correlating with where and how Americans live and work. Urban revival is driven by high-earning, middle-aged adults, working in downtown jobs that have seen the highest percentages of wage growth. But most population growth and job growth happens in the suburbs, where people with lower incomes fall, Millennial or otherwise. The much talked-about phenomenon of urban cores gaining jobs faster than their suburbs was confined to certain cities [2], and was entirely untrue in others. In the general case, suburbs have consistently posted higher rates of employment growth [3][4], and command a higher absolute number of jobs. In fact, some of the highest growth areas are metropolitan areas that hardly even have an urban core that stands apart from its suburbs [5]. Suburbs everywhere are living on borrowed time, because as their infrastructure ages, they will develop the same problems circling back to lack of funding as the big cities that gave rise to them in the first place, but without the political and business clout that big cities mustered up to retain their relevance. As the infrastructure ages, the taxes will rise, discretionary funding on quality-of-live services like schools will be reduced, and the most wealthy will begin to move out into a new ring of exurbs (or edge cities), or back to the urban core, leaving progressively poorer people to remain and take their place. Only suburbs which can successfully pivot to being employment centers can avoid this painful demographic crunch. [1] http://jedkolko.com/2016/03/30/urban-revival-not-for-most-americans/ http://jedkolko.com/2016/03/30/urban-revival-not-for-most-am... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/24/upshot/more-new-jobs-are-in-city-centers-while-employment-growth-shrinks-in-the-suburbs.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/24/upshot/more-new-jobs-are-... [3] https://www.brookings.edu/research/where-are-the-jobs-cities-suburbs-and-the-competition-for-employment/ https://www.brookings.edu/research/where-are-the-jobs-cities... [4] http://www.newgeography.com/content/005264-suburbs-continue-dominate-jobs-and-job-growth http://www.newgeography.com/content/005264-suburbs-continue-... [5] http://blog.indeed.com/2017/03/08/bounceback-for-job-and-wage-growth/ http://blog.indeed.com/2017/03/08/bounceback-for-job-and-wag...
- calebm 9y agoJust today on Reddit, there was a "shower thought" that being a Millennial is like starting to play monopoly where there is a hotel on every property. My response is that, of course all the properties in the major cities have hotels and are expensive, but there are many properties still up for sale for cheap if you move out a little. The first rule of negotiation is being willing to walk away.
- xutopia 9y agoThe first paragraph has an assumption that might be proven wrong. This generation might not have children like the previous generation did, at least not in the same numbers.
- sampleinajar 9y agoGood point. Depends on the generation you are referring to. Gen X? Child rates have been slowly decreasing since the 70s. I imagine most expect that trend to continue, but I"m not sure that it would be enough to preclude a substantial desire to move into the suburbs.
- acconrad 9y agoI don't know if this chain of events actually lines up. The way I see it, autonomous vehicles will allow anyone (not just millennials) to reclaim that lost time commuting, which can be used for work and thus make the idea of commuting from the suburbs not all that bad. Then people won't mind moving far away from the city centers given that the commute is no longer a fruitless activity. Personally I'd be very happy to live an hour away from a city if it meant that I could use the 2 hours round-trip to do work (if I still had to work in an office).
- Unkechaug 9y agoI think that wish would be corrupted quickly. Oh so you commute all the way out to the suburbs? Hey since we know you'll have nothing to do anyway please complete these additional tasks. If you work on the way home we won't bother you after you actually arrive there.
- jstarfish 9y agoJust say no. Exploitative behavior only becomes an expectation when enough employees prove willing to do it.
- Eridrus 9y agoWe're almost certainly going to see more congestion charges put in place when self-driving cars take off, making this a less viable strategy. I feel like we're going to need differently organized cities to really see drastic benefits from self-driving cars in large cities.
- pnathan 9y agoafter moving from seattle to a smaller city , my wife and I regret it a great deal and plan to move to an urban location permanently, with our young child. It was a voyage of self-discovery.
- otoburb 9y agoCan you elaborate why? Based on the reference to your young child, is your regret based on daycare and school choices?
- pnathan 9y ago* Terrible transit. * Anti-tax attitude * Limited multi-cultural experience * Less forward-looking attitude (this is hard to verbally pin down). With respect to the child, it'll be more difficult in the city. But I want to stress that as a gestalt system, the big city is a better place to live for all of us. If we had the opportunity work out, we would live in Manhattan (but the relocation is a substantial logistical problem at present). Opportunities exist in the big city that are not present in smaller cities or suburbs.
- j-c-hewitt 9y agoI live in the country remote working like some of the other commenters here after being priced out of NYC (where I'm from) and the Bay Area (where I worked for a few years). That I have great internet and wonderful amenities are two key pieces. However after having run small businesses and/or freelancing for 10 years I can say that it is not something that everyone is cut out for. The problem the cities have now is that they are not priced for people who work for a living. They are priced for people with access to intergenerational wealth and/or who don't work and just live off investments. Everything from the cost of property to the tax structure penalizes people who work severely and rewards people who own property and live off capital gains lavishly. Everything in the laws screams out "YOU SHOULD NOT BE WORKING HERE/EARNING A SALARY/STARTING A SMALL BUSINESS -- MOVE OUT, PEASANT." People included in the "PEASANT" category include people earning low to mid six figure salaries. There is only so much that people will tolerate working hard to make their landlord rich. Other cities in the country that aren't the big offenders that everyone complains about don't really have this problem. It is a problem that there is a solution for, though: move out, buy property, save money, work less, enjoy life more, get to keep the stuff that you used to give up to your landlord for the privilege of a few square feet in a dirty, stinky city with infrastructure that would humiliate someone from a country that isn't as backwards as the US.
- electricEmu 9y agoAlternatively, you save for years. My SO and I have lived in a smaller apartment for years to save a house down + backup. We have no inherited wealth; we came from a rural background. We could own in the countryside or suburbs. Both have shitty commutes, limit opportunity, and come with worse arrangements. Sticker price is lower, but TCO is higher outside the city. I'll take opportunity in the city; where I don't have to drive an hour.
- mistermann 9y agoTotally agree, and Canada is worse - we have very few major cities to choose from, and the two major ones (Vancouver and Toronto) are insanely expensive to live in on an affordability basis, due to the terrible wages Canadians enjoy compared to the US. And worse, our already large but planned to increase annually immigration levels, much of which are wives and children of the world's 1%, who also coincidentally choose to live in the two cities above, essentially guarantees that working class people (by that I mean anyone that actually works for a living) will be eventually pushed out, unless some sort of a public dorm system is introduced.
- eliaspro 9y agoWe'll, I would have loved to stay in the beautiful green and generally family friendly city I lived in, but once you're at a point where one has to spend around 2/3 of the income on rent to have sufficient room for kids there's simply no other choice than moving to a village. Nearly everyone of my friends with kids did exactly the same.
- s2g 9y ago> Where will this generation buy homes and raise children? what is this "buy home" idea? I don't understand. Anyway, hopefully in the city.