Young families want homes in suburbs

How to attract young families to Lake Oswego?  

Young couples with children, or contemplating starting a family, are looking for single family homes with yards, in the suburbs.  Lake Oswego will continue to lose large numbers of young families to other suburban towns as tear-downs here continue to deplete the stock of affordable, starter homes.

As the Millennials age, the number of singles will dwindle, and apartments will lose their attraction.  Lake Oswego has what people still want - single-family home neighborhoods and a great place to raise a family.  Can Lake Oswego keep its charm, livibility and affordability for future families?

Wall Street Journal, January 22, 2015  By Kris Hudson
Millennials Yearn for Home in the Suburbs
New Survey Shows 66% of Millennials Want to Live in the Suburbs

LAS VE­GAS—
One of the hottest debates

mong hous­ing econ­o­mists these days isn’t the trajectory of home sales, but whether mil­len­ni­als, those born in the 1980s and 1990s, want to re­main ur­ban­ites or even­tually re­lo­cate to the sub­urbs.

Some de­mog­ra­phers and econ­omists ar­gue that the pref­er­ence of mil­len­ni­als, also called Gener­a­tion Y, for city liv­ing will re­main long last­ing. And sur­veys of these young ur­ban res­i­dents have tended to show that they don’t mind small liv­ing quar­ters as long as they have ac­cess to mass tran­sit and are close to en­ter­tain­ment, din­ing and their work­places.

But a sur­vey re­leased Wednes­day by the Na­tional As­so­ci­a­tion of Home Builders, a trade group, sug­gested oth­er­wise. The sur­vey, based on re-sponses from 1,506 peo­ple born since 1977, found that most want to live in sin­gle-fam­ily homes out­side of the ur­ban cen­ter, even if they now re­side in the city.

“While you are more likely to at­tract this gen­er­a­tion than other gen­er­ations to buy a condo or a house downtown, that is a rel­a­tive term,” said Rose Quint, the as­so­ci­a­tion’s as­sistant vice president of sur­vey re­search. “The ma­jor­ity of them will still want to buy the house out there in the sub­urbs.”

The sur­vey, which was re­leased at the as­so­ci­a­tion’s con­ven­tion in Las Ve­gas, found that 66% want to live in the sub­urbs, 24% want to live in rural ar­eas and 10% want to live in a city cen­ter. One of the main rea­sons peo­ple want to re­lo­cate from the city cen­ter, she said, is that they “want to live in more space than they have now.” The sur­vey showed 81% want three or more bed­rooms in their home.

“The pref­er­ence for the sub­urbs sug­gests that fu­ture de­mand will be in the form of sin­gle-fam­ily homes rather than con­do­mini­ums more preva­lent in cities,” said David Berson, chief econ­omist with Na­tionwide In­sur­ance Co. “That’s also good news for fu­ture sub­ur­ban sin­gle-family sell­ers, many of whom are baby boomers.”