Does Your Neighbors’ Age Affect Your Home Value?

Does Your Neighbors’ Age Affect Your Home Value?

Understanding the ages of the people around your home is an excellent way to begin assessing property value. Here’s how it works; jobs have caused rapid outmigration in small towns across America. Young, working-age people are buying housing in popular places to find better, more fulfilling, and higher-paying jobs. If you move to San Francisco to work in tech, you’ll be close to great tech companies, but you’ll have an incredibly difficult time finding housing.

 

The majority of the population in growing, high-industry areas are between 20- and 64-years-old. Places that have been abandoned by outmigration, then, skew 65-years-old or older. Essentially, wherever young, working-age people live, housing is in higher demand—and therefore less affordable. The highest concentration of working-age people is in San Francisco County. Here, the median home value is a whopping $1,359,000 (compared to the national median of just $217,300). One must only acquire an age demographic map to get an understanding of their home value.

 

There does, however, seem to be one place where this rule does not apply: The Sun Belt. Retirees move to warm, sunny, beautiful locations to live life in luxury, but their presence does not appear to disrupt home values. It appears that these locations, often coastal areas with balmy weather, offer enough amenities to attract residents regardless of age.

 

If you live in one of these low-valued places, don’t fret—there appears to be a new trend sweeping the real estate market. Young people are beginning to rely more on the gig economy and freelance work, which introduces a greater range of flexibility. Rather than moving to urban hubs in search of industry, individuals can now move to cheap, underdeveloped parts of the country and buy large homes for next to nothing. As the trend continues, we expect home values to rise while the median age dips.

 

Rachel Richardson

Leave your message