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Balancing Act: Walking the Generational Tightrope
By Lisa Herceg, Director, Marketing Research, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS®
REALTORS® are significantly different in terms of age and ways of communicating compared to their clients. However, these “generational differences” may not be as disparate as they first seem.
The typical REALTOR® is a 54-year-old female. That age has dropped from 56 or 57 over the last seven years, but she is still typically a younger baby boomer. Meanwhile, the median age of the U.S. population currently is 38: squarely on the cusp between Generation X and millennials.
As you can see in the chart above, generationally, REALTORS® tend to have more in common with home sellers than with homebuyers. Millennials are more likely to be buyers than any other generation: 36 percent of all buyers. So this is a group that REALTORS® should focus on for their business.
The age of repeat buyers has steadily increased since 1981, with the age of buyers in general increasing relatively in line with that. However, the median age of first-time homebuyers has remained more or less flat since 1995 at 32. First-time homebuyers are likely to stay right around this age. So REALTORS® need to continue to constantly look at that age group as the generations shift.
That being said, the challenges for REALTORS® might not be quite as steep as this generational gap suggests. Here are the top three home-buying myths about millennials:
Myth #1: Millennials never want to own ANYTHING. Not true. 90 percent of millennials who currently don’t own a home want to own a home (Q2 2018 Housing Opportunities and Market Experience (HOME) Survey).
Myth #2: Millennials will buy everything online – even a home. Ninety percent of millennials used a real estate agent to purchase their home, vs. 87 percent of buyers overall.*
Myth #3: Online replaces word of mouth for millennials. Wrong. Millennial buyers are more likely than any other generation to have found their real estate agent via referral from a friend, neighbor or relative (48 percent vs. 32 – 39 percent of all other generations). * *2017 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers
Meanwhile, the top three ways in which REALTORS® prefer to communicate and the top three ways that millennials find it most important to communicate with their agents line up:
In terms of finding an agent, millennial buyers just want what everyone else does. In the 2017 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers, we asked buyers what factors were most important when choosing an agent, and what skills and qualities were very important to them in an agent. Honesty and integrity are by far the most important factors across generations. Knowledge of purchase price and of the local area are very important for everyone. And sellers want the same things of their agent, regardless of generation: a good reputation, honesty, knowledge, and getting the property priced and sold in a reasonable timeframe.
Lisa Herceg is the director of Marketing Research for the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS®.