They are brash, smart, high-performance twenty-somethings and they may be taking over our nation's urban centers.

But that's a good thing, because this young demographic group is in position to do for the next housing boom what their parents did for the last one.

Call them "Gen-Yers," "Echo Boomers" or maybe even "You Tubers." They are the grown-up kids of baby boomers, born as early as 1977, they are 76 million strong and, most significantly, they are ready to leave the nest.

Officially called "Generation Y," the demographic is shedding its "slacker" image, each year earning more than $210 billion and pumping some $170 billion of those earnings back into the economy.

Newport Beach, CA-based The Concord Group, a boutique real estate consulting firm, says when these boomer babies choose a crib, home is often in the hip urban habitats of the southwest.

Emma Tyaransen, a principal and director at the Concord Group, says Generation Y has created a ground zero in Dallas where they make up nearly half the city's urban core population.

They are forcing real estate developers, city planners and business owners to sit up and take notice.

Don't try to spoon feed them cookie-cutter tract homes or suburban sprawl. They are 30 percent more likely to live within three miles of a city center.

They prefer condos, lofts and townhomes with character, distinctive architecture, and style. Think urban density, infill, transit oriented development and the kind of adaptive reuse of existing properties that typically comes with today's downtown redevelopment efforts.

Tyranansen says their mall rat days are over and they prefer retail close in, right outside their door, as part of mixed use housing developments. They like the concentrated live-work-play environments of todays' inner city condo, loft and townhome developments.

And luckily for the planet, their housing choice comes with a bonus.

Tyaransen says when Gen-Yers set up house, as a consequence of where they choose to live, they have a higher "green" profile and a smaller carbon footprint than their parents who live in larger, less energy-efficient homes outside the city core.

Published: March 10, 2008

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Broderick Perkins parlayed a career in old-school journalism into a contemporary digital news service that really hits home. The award-winning consumer journalist, originally from Wilmington, DE, is founder, publisher and executive editor of the bootstrap DeadlineNews Group, a Silicon Valley-based editorial content and consulting service specializing in residential real estate, consumer news and related editorial consulting services. The DeadlineNews Group includes the website, DeadlineNews.com, offering real estate editorial content and consulting services, and its back shop, the Deadline Newsroom, an open house on news that really hits home. Perkins obtained his formal journalism education from University of Delaware and a journalism boot camp, the Institute of Journalism Education at the University of California-Berkeley. He went on to 20 years of service as a daily newspaper journalist at the Wilmington, DE News Journal and San Jose, CA Mercury News. Perkins covered housing on the San Jose Mercury News reporting team which earned a General News Reporting Pulitzer Prize in 1989 for coverage of the Loma Prieta earthquake. He has also produced real estate, consumer and small business content for the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, RealtyTimes.com, Nolo.com, Better Homes and Gardens, the National Association of Realtors, Homestore/Move and Intuit/Quicken among more than three dozen publications. In addition to managing the DeadlineNews Group, Perkins most recently served as chief editorial consultant for Nolo's Essential Guide To Buying Your First Home, Nolo, and writes real estate television scripts for RealtyTimes.com.