We’ve talked a lot about millennials on the Memphis Invest blog. That generation, roughly spanning college graduates to thirty-somethings, are the up-and-coming generation that gets a lot of flack in the world of real estate. Post-recession, they took a lot of blame for lack of recovery: namely because they weren’t buying homes.

We’ve talked about how a combination of student debt and wage stagnation has kept them from saving for down payments and how shifting lifestyles has kept them renting. No matter how we as real estate professionals feel about millennials, it doesn’t change the fact that this generation is important—particularly when it comes to real estate.

Since the last recession and the crash of the housing market, many have taken to blaming millennials for its sluggish recovery. The up-and-coming generation of new homebuyers, after all, has been historically key in the reinvigorating of real estate markets across the country. First-time homebuyers have always been a crucial piece of the puzzle.

Millennials, however, were breaking the pattern—and, in the eyes of many, causing the market to drag. Whether millennials were saddled with too much student debt to save up for a down payment on a home or simply found themselves preferring to rent, the slow buying pace certainly didn’t help market recovery.

Real estate professionals seem to enjoy speculating when millennials will start buying: and as much as we take these predictions with a grain of salt, 2016 just might be the year. The Seattle Times predicts that a third of this years’ homebuyers will be millennials, a modest estimate compared to some, but a definite improvement. The Tennessean reports some realtors have clients that are mostly millennials—upwards of 60%. So given not just these predictions, but mounting evidence to support them, why now? And why not more?

I found this infographic earlier this week at The Commission Place and kept reading and reading about this topic.  I wanted to share it with all of our readers - many of whom are in this key demographic.

Millennials are changing the face of real estate as the next generation of buyers have not come out from under student loan debt to become first home buyers.  So who is going to buy property?  That is being left to the baby boomers (down sizing) and the Millennials (moving up).