ONE of the major challenges developers face is how to build a home that will appeal to the current generation of property purchasers.
Tastes and trends, as we know, change from one generation to the next. In the days of our grandparents, homes were largely huge, with several rooms, high ceilings, large verandas and most probably a big garden.
Those houses were most likely built to meet the needs of a culture that took it for granted that two or three generations would live together under one roof. It was a time when the second generation could count on their parents to help watch over their children.
As population grew and our landscape became more urbanised, homes became smaller. Children moved out of their parents' homes when they got married so they could have their own place where they could start their own families. Probably place where they work, or have their business.
Today, we are probably looking at yet another shift in the continuously changing taste among property purchasers.
The Baby Boomers are mostly retired, and the Gen X babies have reached middle age.
This is the era of the Gen Y a generation that also goes by many other names, such as the Millennial Generation, Generation Next and Generation Net. It is generally accepted that Gen Y comprises people born in the 1980s or early 1990s. Those in this generation are also known as Echo Boomers, most probably because some of them are children of Baby Boomers.
Having grown up with the Internet, they are mostly familiar with communication, media and digital technologies. Given that people are taking longer to walk down the aisle; it can be safely assumed that there are many singles in this group.
This generation of people are also more likely to move out of the roost at an earlier age, before they get married.
So where will they choose to live? Will they be renting mostly, or are they more likely to put some money down for a place of their own? And if they do, what kinds of property are they most likely to opt for?
Some in this group may already be fairly successful in their careers. Even if they do not earn exceptionally high incomes, they are more likely to have more cash left over after all the necessities have been taken care of to spend on themselves.
Being single, they will not have to worry about cutting back on some discretionary spending to meet cost of necessities associated with people with spouses and children.
Of course, that does not necessarily mean that they will use this additional cash to invest in property. A fair number of them may even have parents who would buy them their first home.
Given this scenario, what kind of homes will appeal to this generation of buyers?
Presumably, no survey has yet been done in India to find out where people in the Gen Y group will choose to live. Nevertheless, we can assume that most of them will likely choose to live closer to urban centres.
Urban centres will also provide them with the conveniences now associated with modern living excellent communication facilities through wi-fi, convenient public transportation and entertainment centres. Thank to the growing number of builders and the N numbers of projects build by them. The perfect match for the nuclear family, 1HK, 1BHK, 2BHK
As costs are generally higher in such areas, Gen Y home buyers will probably opt for smaller units. Given that most of them are likely to be single or just married and still without children, smaller apartments are ideal.
Of course there are no statistics available in India yet to say for certain that all this is true. All the same, we can always take a peek into what is happening in other countries to give us an idea of how things may turn out in India.
An article in a recent issue of Fortune magazine offers some interesting insights. According to the magazine, in the United States the number of people aged between 18 and 34 (largely Gen Y) choosing to live on their own is growing the fastest from about 500,000 in 1950 to about five million today.
Interestingly women who choose to live on their own outnumber men 18 million women to 14 million men. These numbers have not been broken down by age groups but presumably it is uniform all round, it would apply to the Gen Y group as well.
If this same trend were to be seen in India, home builders will be forced to rethink their concepts for new projects. Building a home for the single woman in her 30s would probably be quite unlike doing the same for a couple or a single man.
Businesses in the United States are already responding to this trend. For instance, home-improvement giant Lowe's features a lone woman renovating her bathroom in its TV advertisement.
With an increasing number of women joining the workforce and making it to the top of the corporate ladder, the Gen Y single woman can no longer be ignored as a potential customer by property developers.
What will she look for in a home? Will she prefer to live near her workplace, presumably in the city centre, or will she opt for a pad in the suburb and make the trek to work every morning?
Will she go for a two-room apartment just in case her parents visit from the home town, or will she buy a studio unit for convenience?
Of course we also cannot ignore the single men or the married couples. Increasingly they will be the ones making the purchases. If we ignore their needs and wants we risk losing sight of the market trend.
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