Austin: The Latest 'In' City for Success-Driven Millennials

You're fresh out of university and you have three things in mind: pay off your student loans FAST, get a great job (that would help you pay off the loan quicker), and buy a home. Admit it-- being able to afford your home means you've done well in your career, and many young people use home ownership as a benchmark of their success. Want to know where millennials stand a great chance of getting all these three things at once? Austin, Texas.

A recent report from the National Association of Realtors® [again] hailed the southern metropolis as the best city for young home buyers (an accolade the city has been enjoying for the past few years). Using employment, population, income, and housing condition data as metrics for the study, Austin landed the top spot in the "Best Cities" List. The other cities that made it to the list are Charleston, Denver, Minneapolis, and Ogden.

According to Realtor.com chief economist Jonathan Smoke, “The millennial generation’s move into homeownership is one of the most important drivers of the real estate market over the next 15 to 20 years.” In fact, many industry experts expect younger buyers to comprise a third of the nation's sales this year-- a figure amounting to roughly 2 million homes. 

Dubbed the "live music capital of the world", Austin is seeing a flock of millennials coming in to the city with its numerous opportunities. Millennials already comprise 18% of its population. Thanks to the cities progressive politics, dog-friendliness, and an interesting commitment to "Keep Austin weird", the city won't lose its interesting light in the eyes of interested millennials anytime soon. And thanks to a 4.9% increase in employment opportunities in the past year, thanks to tech sector growth and a resulting influx of young entrepreneurs, Austin is not showing signs of slowing down.

“Austin’s hip and exciting and has a lot of opportunity in technology... it’s a very unique place—a small blue dot in the middle of a big, red state.”

--Brad Pauly, Realtor® at Pauly Presley Realty

To read more about the latest report from Realtor®, you may access the original report here.