- During the pandemic, cities had a hard time retaining population as fear of the virus, as well as affordability pulled residents to the suburbs. 2020 and 202221 there was strong outmigration in these urban gateway markets.
- The urban recovery began in 2021 solely in the 18–24-year-old age cohort and got worse across all other age cohorts from 2020.
- This year not only has the 18–24-year-old age cohort turned firmly positive, but the performance across the 25–34-year-old age cohort has begun to recover as well. These are the two age groups that are most likely to rent apartments, correlating highly with multifamily fundamentals.
- The pull factors of cities will likely keep the trend moving in this direction through 2023.
Young People Are Increasingly Driving The Urban Recovery
Sam Tenenbaum • 10/17/2022
Moody’s Analytics shared a slide in a recent presentation to our research team that was particularly interesting to the future of cities when it comes to multifamily. The key takeaway is that young people are returning to cities, driving the urban recovery from the pandemic. This data is based on data from the Equifax credit file, meaning it’s a much timelier look at migration trends across the country than the once-a-year data released by the Census Bureau.
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Sam Tenenbaum is Cushman & Wakefield’s Head of Multifamily Insights. In this series, he shares unique perspectives on today’s multifamily market, gathered from Cushman & Wakefield’s unique data on the lending environment, strong capital markets presence and the 175,000 units that we manage across the U.S. |
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