Generation Y, the leading edge of which will come of home-buying age in less than four years, thinks, talks and acts differently, and they have decidedly different preferences in housing. Are you ready for this?
Gonzales grew up in Tigard, Ore., a suburb of Portland. She's traveled overseas, lived in Barcelona and Germany, and landed her first job out of college this year, working for an upstart sneaker company as their “community manager”—public relations for the Web 2.0 world.
Gonzales has a wish list that details must-haves for any WINK, and foremost among those demands is location. She wants a home—single-family detached, not a condo—in the city, where she can walk to dinner, get home easily and safely after a night on the town, and bike to work within 15 minutes or less. She is looking for something that can be easily customized—even gutted—to fit her need to entertain, throw dinner parties, and have friends over for game nights.
“It would be a shell of whatever we want it to be,” Gonzales says. “I hate cookie-cutter anything. We hate the suburbs, but we still want a neighborhood feel.”
LESSON NO. 3:KNOW HOW TO REACH THEMLike many in her age group, Gonzales could practically click a mouse before she could hold a pencil. She has accounts on Facebook, MySpace, and a dozen other social networking sites. And she could probably send a text message blindfolded.
Such a media-saturated, brand-conscious world has turned members of Gen-Y into extremely savvy consumers. They're plugged in, they do their research, they know what they're looking for, they know how to find it—and they do it all instantaneously.
“Today's kids are comfortable with technology in a way that people from other generations don't understand,” says Reynol Junco, a professor at Lockhaven University in Pennsylvania and co-author of the book Connecting to the Net.Generation. “They are incredible multitaskers and were using computers sitting on their parents' laps.”
For Ritchie Metzler, Gonzales' Realtor with Urban Pacific Real Estate in Portland, tapping the Gen-Y market has meant completely revamping the tactics he uses for older home buyers. For him, reaching the younger crowd means a snazzy Web page, an engaging blog, and profiles on Facebook, MySpace, and any other site he can log on to.
“I am all over the Internet,” says Metzler, 31, who went into real estate two-and-a-half years ago after purchasing his own first home. “Every single site I can be on, I'm on. I don't do any marketing outside of the Web.”
Metzler sends out text messages to his clients the instant that homes come on the market. More often than not, they end up texting him because they found out about a new listing first.
More likely than not, Metzler and his clients will soon be keeping track of each other's movements via Twitter, an online service that allows users to send instant status updates.
