Urban Buying Is a Winning Strategy
For the past 60 years, America has moved to the suburbs. Now the rush is over. The trend is reversing toward urban living. How can investors cash in?
Before we discuss how to win, what drives the reversing trend toward urban housing? The factors influencing this change range widely. The Baby Boomer children are recoiling against commuting. 77% of Echo Boomers (children of baby boomers) desire urban living, walking communities, and easy mass transit. As a Baby Boomer, I frankly am completely in-synch with this statistic. My children and the children of every family I know have spent more hours commuting than can possibly be considered reasonable. With Echo Boomers beginning to graduate from College and beginning to drive housing demand, perhaps the hand writing was on the wall. Add to this the energy crisis, the financial crisis, and the War on Terror and perhaps you have the perfect storm against suburban housing. These two factors have made reduced imported energy dependence a must. Along with that event, the financial crisis has made frugality the rule. That rule means folks are going to be doing their level best to stay out of the car. Finally, in an aging society with slowing immigration, society demands max productivity from each person because generational growth cannot supply productive gains. If the U.S. is to continue the economic and wealth gains achieved in the past, efficiency requirements are critical.
In many ways, the costs of suburban living are simply to high for our society. We can ill afford time lost in commutes. We can’t afford the pollution and waste of an overly dispersed populace. We are harmed by useless consumption of available energy. Additionally, the facts are growing that a well rested society is happier, more productive, safer, and more stable. Our previous suburban lifestyle is the enemy of these requirements.
So, what does all this mean? Investors find themselves on the cusp potentially one of the greatest opportunities to occur in the last 50 years. Much of the U.S. population is going to slowly and steadily move toward urban areas. This move will occur even as the U.S. grows another 100,000,000 to 120,000,000 over the next 50 years. As a result many blighted urban areas will be reinvigorated. Many areas that are seen as good urban areas will become fantastic ones as urban migration and continued national growth push steady increasing demand for owners in these areas. Investors who buy into this trend stand to achieve over-sized returns.
