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Luxury

Now it’s millennials buying up multimillion homes – Sotheby’s real estate survey predicts rising prices as younger buyers skip starter homes for lifestyle living

STORYBloomberg
A mansion in Montecito, California on sale for almost US$17 million sitting on just over four acres. Photo: Sotheby’s International Realty
A mansion in Montecito, California on sale for almost US$17 million sitting on just over four acres. Photo: Sotheby’s International Realty
millennials

  • Buyers born in the 80s are buying late, but buying big, skipping affordable first homes to splurge on environmentally conscious, WFH-ready dream homes
  • Lifestyle factors propel luxury property in affluent cities like Aspen in Colorado, Austin in Texas and Australia’s Mornington Peninsula

In sharp contrast to the “slacker” stereotype that has defined their generation, millennials aren’t living in parents’ basements. They’re buying multimillion-dollar homes. 

At 38 per cent, millennials – adults born from 1981 to 1996 – represent the largest share of homebuyers in the US, according to a survey by the National Association of Realtors released last year. “They’re just as interested in owning a home. They just waited longer to buy their first one,” says Bradley Nelson, chief marketing officer of Sotheby’s International Realty.

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Breaking from the notion of a “starter home” that older generations embraced, wealthy millennials, Nelson says, are going big.

This US$17.5 million, six-bedroom home is on the market in Austin, Texas. Photo: Sotheby’s International Realty
This US$17.5 million, six-bedroom home is on the market in Austin, Texas. Photo: Sotheby’s International Realty
“In the past, people bought a modest property, lived in it until starting a family, and then traded up to a larger property,” he says. “Millennials are finally coming out of the gate, and it’s not uncommon for the first purchase as a first time homebuyer to be a multimillion-dollar luxury home in the US or internationally.”

As a result, millennials are quickly becoming a dominant force in high-end real estate.

“Baby boomers are retiring to sunnier locales, while remote work has allowed millennials to ascend the housing ladder in smaller, more affordable cities,” says a new report from Sotheby’s on global luxury in 2021. “An emphasis on things like sustainability will certainly go into overdrive with the ageing of millennials, who, at 72.1 million [in the US], are the largest adult generation, with unique consumer preferences that will profoundly influence the direction of the luxury-housing market.”

Market-moving preferences