Texas Young & Old: How Demographics are Changing in Cities, Large and Small
If you think the demographics of your Texas town has shifted to older homeowners and young renters, you may be right. If this is true, how will this affect the real estate market and marketability of your home?
Better yet, who will run for political office and step up to help run towns and cities? Do the same municipalities have the funds needed for an older population?
Generally, in our part of the country, Millennials are finding it much easier to afford homes, but overall, young people today are finding it much harder to buy houses compared to previous generations, and the increase in price is not the only reason. Real estate agents and mortgage companies across the country have devised entire strategies, due to this shift, on how to serve customers of each age group; Baby Boomers, Gen Xers, and of course, Millennials.
“Young adults used to account for a much larger portion of homeowners than they do today — the prevalence of college, mounting student loan debt, and an increasingly tight housing market are slowly pushing back the age of first-time homebuyers,” according to the real estate app, ABODO.
ABODO started in Madison, Wisconsin, as “Moveinmadison.com” and has evolved into a venture-backed tech startup, becoming a heavily trafficked search engine by college students and young professionals across the country looking for a new home. Not surprising, since there are more than 45,000 students alone attending the University of Wisconsin. According to the Madison Times, ABODO now has users in 260 cities across the country in markets from Berkeley, California, to Ithaca, New York. In Madison, the company estimates that more than 75 percent of the city’s 125,000 renters used ABODO in 2016. So, if Millennials are driving the success of a “renting” app, are they not purchasing homes?
In Texas’ big-city markets, the highest Millennial ownership rates are in San Antonio (29.2 percent) and Houston (29.1 percent). In Austin, 26.5 percent of Millennials own homes. Texas’ small cities fare much better when it comes to millennial homebuying. In Beaumont, 42.8 percent of Millennials own a home, 33.2 percent in Brownsville and 31.4 percent in El Paso. With home prices in North Texas up by more than 50 percent in recent years due to the oil business, it’s harder for young first-time buyers to afford a purchase. ABODO estimates that the average value of a Millennial-owned home in the Dallas area is $200,805, which according to many realtors is lower than the average sales price.
According to the state of Texas, despite clear indications of population aging, Texas remains one of the youngest states in the country based on several indicators of population aging. Although Texas added the second highest number of elder population between 2000 and 2014, Texas remains one of the youngest states as defined by median age, proportion of older population, and the aging index, according to state demographic data. Texas real estate companies, brokers and individual buyers and sellers all need to pay attention to the both the shift in age of buyers and sellers and perhaps a trend that indicates the lack of buying and selling as our future depends on it.
Please do not rely on this article as legal advice. We can tell you what the law is, but until we know the facts of your given situation, we cannot provide legal guidance. This website is for informational purposes and not for the purposes of providing legal advice. Information about our municipal law practice can be found here.
