2 minute readCould the economic squeeze and correction in residential real estate trades expected in the 12 to 36 months ahead become a cauldron of opportunity, adaptiveness, and business resilience?
Crisis — As successive generations of young adults in the United States cope with rising student debt and housing costs, multigenerational living is increasingly providing a respite from the storm. A quarter of U.S. adults ages 25 to 34 resided in a multigenerational family household in 2021, up from 9% in 1971. Precision in residential real estate and construction, we learn from those who’ve comes down to three essential requirements for a business. Those three essentials … and critically, timing make for success or failure, and timing now demands that builders and developers and their partners lean way into to the wherewithal of households trying to do more with less. So, what if purpose-built single-family-for-rent communities – availing as many of them are, of public and private homebuilders’ high-volume construction capabilities – started including multi-gen floor plans? What if those floorplans or even the lot plan could include an ADU? Multigenerational households could in many cases build greater local community support as local residents gain a new option to remain in or near the town they’ve been living in, in a combined household with children or children-in-law. Multifamily new development is experimenting with revenue-units as part of traditional vertical apartment configurations and offerings, recognizing the “for financial reasons” driver among potential customers. No reason that multi-gen floorplans and backyard ADUs couldn’t scale as an attainability solution for many households that chose or have to rent on the single-family side as well. What this would mean from a construction, manufacturing, and assembly standpoint is that low-variability branded multi-gen models could start being produced offsite, just like many apartments are now, speeding the role of modern manufacturing in single-family production. Everybody has some sense of appreciation for the notion of necessity being the mother of invention. Here’s a case in real life that could evolve as consumer households continue to drive typologies and living arrangements and designs that may one day define a new normal.
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