Marketing to millenials

Posted by Mark Chapman on August 14th, 2012 at 10:56 pm

Dane Hahn

By Dane Hahn

Real Estate

Who would have guessed in the heady old days of Pres­i­dent George Bush (the senior) when the mantra was “who­ever dies with the most stuff, wins” that it’s now cool to save money. Even big banks are cash­ing in on the trend and com­ing up with hip tag lines like “fru­gal is the new cool” as they pro­mote ads and videos online that help con­sumers learn ways to save money.

The poor eco­nomic times — some would say “inher­ited” from the Bush fam­ily — are caus­ing some major shifts in home own­er­ship. Many young peo­ple choose to rent longer rather than buy. Oth­ers are dri­ven by the fact that they can’t afford a down pay­ment or sim­ply don’t qual­ify for a loan. But add that to the fact that today there is a larger-than-ever per­cent­age of sin­gle peo­ple. This results in smaller house­holds, and these folks are seek­ing smaller and cen­trally located walk­a­ble places to live and work.

The mil­len­ni­als (those born in the decades just prior to the turn of the cen­tury — 1980–2000) share some spe­cific desires regard­ing their hous­ing needs. Today, the mil­len­ni­als are mostly under 30, and they are mov­ing out of their parent’s houses; they want to drive less and have pub­lic trans­porta­tion nearby. They don’t nec­es­sar­ily need or want to own a home right now. Instead, they might pre­fer to rent a newer, hip and mod­ern place instead of one they might have to fix up. (Think HGTV’s apart­ment search).

Gen­er­ally, the under 30’s are strapped for cash, but never mind that, they still expect lots of ameni­ties included in their rent – like a com­mon area pool, Wifi and cable; and the use of a gym. Smaller is OK for them, but qual­ity and loca­tion is high on their list of pri­or­i­ties as this gen­er­a­tion is try­ing to save money on things like trans­porta­tion and util­ity bills. Walk­ing to cof­fee shops and social venues is also highly desired.

While rent­ing may be the solu­tion for many mil­len­ni­als, some still want to own their own home. In par­tic­u­lar, young busi­ness women and sin­gle moms from this under-30 gen­er­a­tion view even­tual home own­er­ship as impor­tant to them. These are the young nesters who plan for fam­i­lies and the future. But home own­er­ship is a long-term goal not nec­es­sar­ily a tar­get to be achieved this year or next. This group, at about 80 mil­lion strong, will make a big dif­fer­ence in our hous­ing and eco­nomic future. They are pre­sumed to be a huge rental mar­ket oppor­tu­nity for landlords.

Mar­keters have iden­ti­fied the mil­len­ni­als as the first gen­er­a­tion that will choose to room together for exten­sive peri­ods in order to help save for their own homes in the future.

This is the Apple gen­er­a­tion that val­ues high tech and higher edu­ca­tion, maybe more so than own­ing a home.

Land­lords inter­ested in tar­get­ing this mas­sive gen­er­a­tion need to observe some key points. This group has grown up with tech­nol­ogy, so search­ing for a place to live will likely come by way of the Web but not just through web­sites; instead they will get infor­ma­tion about rental list­ings from social media, like Face­book, Twit­ter, Insta­gram and other shar­ing sites. To be com­pet­i­tive as a land­lord, you have to mar­ket to this gen­er­a­tion where they are famil­iar with get­ting their infor­ma­tion – and that is not nec­es­sar­ily the newspaper.

This group also watches a lot of video — on their phones, com­put­ers and TV’s — but they are always online. And always con­nected. Videos that fea­ture your rental home and show­case how close it is to retail and enter­tain­ment cen­ters will go far in get­ting this gen­er­a­tion to stop in and check out your list­ing. Point out the energy-efficiency sys­tems you’ve put in and how much ten­ants can save on their util­ity bill. Demon­strate the easy-to-care-for sim­plic­ity of your home.

Since this gen­er­a­tion is young, it is obvi­ously ever-changing and devel­op­ing. Keep­ing a close eye on the mil­len­ni­als will help you bet­ter under­stand their hous­ing needs and desires.

Dane Hahn is a real estate pro­fes­sional prac­tic­ing in the Engle­wood area. You can reach him at dane.hahn@gmail.com or on the web at www.danesellsflorida.com

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