Baby Boomers Are Moving To Vegas And Tampa, Millennials Prefer Austin: America's

[Ptarmigan]

Baby Boomers Are Moving To Vegas And Tampa, Millennials Prefer Austin: America's Great Migration In Real-Time
https://zerohedge.com/markets/baby-boomers-are-moving-vegas-and-tampa-millennials-prefer-austin-americas-great-migration

Until now, Bank of America would periodically publish a snapshot of consumer spending and retail sales that was based on real-time debt and credit card data, that provided a far more accurate economic picture months ahead the Census Bureau's distorted, seasonally adjusted (frequently for political reasons) data. Now, it has expanded into geo-tracking, and in a time when we are seeing unprecedented migration patterns across the continental US, the bank has started using internal data on checking, savings, credit and/or other investment accounts to construct near real-time estimates of domestic migration flows, giving the bank and its clients an almost one year of extra insight over and ahead of Census Bureau data.

Cutting straight to the punchline, BofA finds pandemic migration trends are not reversing and America continues to see faster population inflow into sunbelt cities like Austin and Tampa. But, in a curious twist, BofA also finds that house prices are weakening even in cities with growing populations. Why? In addition to high mortgage rates that are dampening demand in the near term, demographic composition also matters. For example, the data shows that population inflows into Austin skew younger, which might be putting more upward pressure on rents instead of on home prices.

Looking through the current housing downturn, local housing markets with more Millennial and Baby Boomer residents could see strength as the former enter prime home-buying age and the latter downsize their houses or move after retirement. Bank of America data suggests Baby Boomers are relocating to Las Vegas and Tampa while Millennials prefer Austin. Both groups are leaving the larger cities of San Francisco and New York.

Let's dig into the data.

A key theme that shaped the housing market during the pandemic was domestic migration (i.e., people moving within the US). While data from the Census Bureau is broken down by metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs), it is only updated annually and can be outdated for real time analysis.

Millenials move to Austin, while Baby Boomers move to Las Vegas and Tampa. Both generations are leaving New York City and San Francisco.

The generational breakdown of Bank of America internal data suggests Baby Boomers’ migration patterns over the past few years have been different from other generations. Specifically, while Austin continues to attract inward migration overall, the number of Baby Boomers in the city has declined over the past year. The exodus of the group with the most cash could have added to the downward pressure on Austin’s home prices over the last year.

Las Vegas, Phoenix, Tampa, and Orlando are among the most popular destinations for Baby Boomers, according to Bank of America internal data (Exhibit 8). Note that the pace of migration slowed for Vegas and Phoenix over the past year, but was relatively unchanged for Tampa and Orlando. This could partly explain the still resilient home price appreciation in Tampa and Orlando relative to other cities.

Alternatively, Baby Boomers, similar to other generations, are leaving some of the largest cities in the US, including the Bay area, New York and Seattle (Exhibit 9).

[Eupher]

Interesting, though anecdotally, my stepson and his wife - who are complete dyed-in-the-wool leftists - recently left Austin for that bastion of Swampsuck - Washington, D.C.

Since they both are irrefutably corrupted with their millennial leftist bullshit, they will probably fit in quite well.