Housing and Demographics

One of the keys for housing demand is demographics. The Census Bureau just released their estimates of the U.S. population by age for July 2025. The following graph is based on the release for 2025.

Note that the largest age groups are in their mid-20s (this is very different from the data released last year - so there are questions about this release). There are still a number of younger Boomers in their early-to-mid 60s, but in general the baby boomer generation is fading away.

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 sixteen 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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