ICYMI: The Minnetonka Real Estate Market
Posted on January 19, 2012
The Patch reported last week on some very interesting trends in the Minnetonka real estate market — specifically, demand for rental properties is high while purchases remain weak.
There’s an interesting nugget buried in the piece:
Meanwhile, realtors are looking to Generation Y—those born in the mid-1980s—to replace Baby Boomers in the housing market. But Generation Y, thus far, isn’t cooperating, Holds said. People from Generation Y tend to wait for the house they want rather than buy the house they can afford, Holds said, and they’re also reluctant to commit to mortgages in a shifting job market.
“Generation X can’t make up the buying power of the Baby Boomers, but Generation Y can,” Holds said. “We’re trying to get this bubble moving, but they just aren’t buying houses. It’s just a completely different attitude, and we’re struggling with that.”
This is exactly what Joe is talking about on the campaign trail: we need to start building city policies that focus on younger buyers in Generation Y, determining what they’re looking for in a home, and fast-tracking projects that build those things, whether in new construction or renovations. Bringing young families to town is not just a “nice-to-have”, it’s an absolute imperative if we want to keep our neighborhoods and economy stable.
Joe and his wife Elizabeth are members of Generation Y. He knows what the younger generation is looking for in first and second homes, and will translate that into working policies on the City Council.
