New urban demographics point to urban housing (1 of 2)

What will the housing market be like 10-20 years from now?

Robert Puentes, a Fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program provides some answers in his presentation, A Review of New Urban Demo-graphics and Impacts on Housing. It’s essentially a slide show displaying key demographics and how they will shape residential development.

As you can see in the first slide on the left, urban downtown populations have grown in the last few decades after declining prior to that. The next two slides provide the demographics behind the downtown growth, 59% living alone (probably mostly women), predominantly between 25-44, with retiring boomers on the rise.

Some other key statistics:
– Suburbia is still growing at a much faster rate
– Minorities made up 33.1% of the population in 2005 vs. 24.4% just 15 years ago, with the most significant growth rates in hispanic and asian groups.
– The top 100 cities are now majority minority.
– Foreign-born resident populations in historic ‘first-ring’ suburbs have quadrupled in the last 30 years.

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