As individuals progress through different life stages, housing needs change. Millennials, Gen Xers, and Baby Boomers' life stages are helping determine each cohort's homeownership rate and migration patterns.
While the hottest market for Millennials is San Francisco, and for Baby Boomers it is Phoenix, Arizona, Gen Xers are increasingly settling down in Texas. Five of the 10 hottest markets for Generation X were in Texas, with Houston at number one, Realtor.com reports. John Burns Real Estate Consulting chief demographer Chris Porter says that "Generation X is looking for housing affordability," and more business-friendly states, adding that "Texas has been one of the fastest-growing regions in the country for a while."
As generations age, they're likely to want some of the things generations before them did. But preferences change too. Each generation "moves in the same direction [as the previous one], but not quite as far," says Dowell Myers, an urban planning and demography professor at the University of Southern California, in Los Angeles. "They'll always be uniquely different [from one another]."
