Your future clients

Generation Y, the largest U.S. age group since the baby boom will make an unmistakable mark on the housing market. It is comprised of people born between 1977 and the mid 1990s.

To get a better feel for Generation Y, here are some quick facts:

• They’re big. Experts say Gen Y ranges in size from 72 million to 78 million people nationwide and 2 billion worldwide. Factor in the young immigrant population, and the group grows even larger.
• They’re diverse. According to a 2005 study by RMG Connect, an international specialist in relationship marketing, one in three echo boomers is non-Caucasian, one in four is from a single-parent home, and three in four have working mothers.
• The Web is their playground. They track down their friends on MySpace, they download their songs from iTunes, and they send e-mails from their phones while waiting in line at Starbucks. And you had better pay attention to their e-mails, because they expect a fast response.
• They buy young. On average, Gen Yers buy homes at age 26, three years earlier than most Generation Xers, according to a Century 21 Real Estate study in 2006. “Gen Y is not just some kid out of college,” says Adam Lee, 28, a salesperson for Abe Lee Realty LLC in Honolulu. “He’s a kid with parents who want to see him get off to the right start and is willing to put 10 percent down on a house and have the kid pay the mortgage every month.”
• They have hectic schedules. “Their lives are a lot busier than their parents were at their age,” says boomer Elaine VonCannon, ABR®, SRES, a RE/MAX real estate agent in Williamsburg, Va., who has been tracking and writing about Gen Y for the past decade. “They’re always moving. They need an all-inclusive agent. So if they’re going to invest, for example, they want someone who can help them manage the property after the sale.”
• They do their research. Don’t try to pull one over on an echo boomer. “You’d better know what you’re talking about, because they will have done the research,” VonCannon says.

To read the full article go to Realtor.org a great resource for real estate professionals.