Whether on or off-campus, no residential sector is closer to Generation Z customers than student housing. Thank you to Dan Boerner and the team at Bisnow for reaching out to Scion for this latest piece.
“A generation of renters raised through the Great Recession, dwindling affordability and the advent of social media is leading to new and competing approaches to marketing housing.
Generation Z, defined by Pew Research Center as people born after 1996, is now entering traditional multifamily properties, bringing tastes for smaller apartments, more practical amenities and even influencers with them. And don’t mistake them for millennials, the cohort right before them, Streetsense Director of Trends and Consumer Forecasting Jamie Sabat said.
“We see so many developers talking just about millennials,” Sabat said. “But millennials are more in the age bracket where they’re having children and starting to move into the suburbs.”
As a result, Streetsense, a Washington, D.C.-based real estate design and branding company owned by CBRE Group, advises a mostly new approach for the distinct demographic, Sabat said.
The U.S. has somewhere over 60 million people in the Gen Z age range, CNBC reports. Even though only the oldest few million have reached working age, the group as a whole already sports a buying power of over $140B, according to a recent estimate by advertising agency Barkley.
Multifamily owners are starting to adjust, including in their amenity offerings, which have changed student housing because of more academic-minded, fiscally conservative students, The Scion Group Senior Vice President of Advisory Services Jay Pearlman said. At least for student housing, gone is some of the appeal of luxury amenities like lazy rivers, which have been replaced by a desire for study and collaborative spaces.
“[Gen Z] is typically a lot more risk-averse when it comes to finances and is less likely to spend the money on the luxury properties, to borrow money and to exit school with a lot of debt,” Pearlman said.
“Therefore, they will trade off larger floor plans or luxury amenities in exchange for a more affordable residential experience,” Pearlman said.”
Read the full article at BisNow.com.
