The burbs' are back – where we want to live has rapidly shifted as the economy has taken off & What's up in Florida
Bottom Line: Remember all of those stories about five years ago about how inner cities were the new destination again and the suburbs and their McMansions might never come back? As is often the case what's old is new again. The narrative that the suburbs weren't desirable any longer was predicated on a few temporary realities.
1) That Millennials didn't want families
2) More affordable city rent/real-real-estate pricing due to the housing crisis
3) Transportation via ride-sharing was a long-term solution for young adults (and they didn't want to own cars)
As I cited through research at the time, and has held true, younger adults simply were having a more difficult time getting established in careers due to coming of age in the Great Recession but for those who were on career paths, similar family formation was, and has, taken place. Now that all Millennials are adults and the economy and job market is strong we're seeing all of this come into focus. There are partial truths to those three original points.
Millennials do want families but often start later and want fewer kids. Xer's averaged about 2.4 kids per family. Millennials are on pace to average around 1.9
City real-estate has become super-expensive in virtually every significant city making the value proposition often unaffordable or more desirable to look to the suburbs
Moving to the burbs meant buying a car, or two, as the case may be
That's where this new info comes into play. According to the new Census info every top growing metro in the country is suburban (or at least doesn't include a major city within it). The top five fastest growing over the past year are:
St. George, Utah: 4%
Myrtle Beach, South Carolina: 3.7%
Greely, Colorado: 3.5%
Bend, Oregon: 3.4%
Lakeland & The Villages, Florida: 2.9%
Speaking of Florida most of our state is still growing above the national average, including much of South Florida - however Miami-Dade and Monroe counties actually grew below the national average over the past year.