Housing and Demographics

One of the keys for housing demand is demographics. This month the Census Bureau released their estimates of the U.S. population by age for July 2024. The following graph is based on the release for 2024. Note that the largest age group is in their early-to-mid 30s. There are still a number of younger Boomers in their early-to-mid 60s.

I’ll return to the above graph and discuss some of the implications for the next decade, but first, here is a similar graph for July 2010.

The arrow points to the large cohort moving into the key renter age group in 2010. It was fifteen years ago that we started discussing the turnaround for apartments. Then, in January 2011, I attended the NMHC Apartment Strategies Conference in Palm Springs, and the atmosphere was very positive. The drivers were 1) very low new supply, and 2) strong demand (favorable demographics, and people moving from owning to renting).

Looking at demographics helped me call the bottom for rents and multi-family construction. And sure, enough multi-family starts bottomed around 2010.

What are the implications for the next decade?

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