Why Do Millennials Want Move-In Ready Homes?

Consumer Reports this past year confirmed that millennials want move-in ready homes when it comes down to it. As the biggest segment of buyers in the real estate market today, millennial preferences are coming to define what sellers need to do and think about selling their home today.

Coming as no surprise, millennials want move-in ready homes. Why? Because they have limited budgets. As the generation saddled with student loan debt, growing up during the Great Recession, and losing out on jobs to global competitors today, millennials weren’t handed the same economic conditions as baby boomers.

So, with the budgets that millennials do have, they want to make the most of it. To them, finding a move-in ready home, with updated kitchen and bath fixtures, is entirely what millennials are looking at when they tour a house for sale today.

Catering to The Younger Generation

Millennials have expressed their top desires when deciding a home that matches their lifestyle:

Updated bath and kitchen: 

Young buyers can’t afford to update kitchens and bathrooms, so they are looking for sellers who go ahead and do that ahead of the home selling process.

Open kitchen space: 

Millennials don’t care about dining rooms; they are old-fashioned and just add more “clutter” in the home. For millennials, the kitchen has become the hangout room.

Home office: 

This is a generation that is part of the gig economy, which means many of the buyers may very well work from home. They will be looking for a room that accommodates their entrepreneurial spirit.

Backyard: 

Many millennials pick their homes specifically because of their dogs today. That means a nice backyard with a fence could be the deciding factor for them.

And the list goes on. From a seller’s perspective, these aren’t exactly the cheapest renovations when it comes time to prep the house for market. Millennials understand that renovated homes are going to come with a higher asking price than those without, but they are more likely to bite on the higher price than stare down thousands of renovations for years after the purchase.

Millennials are a “poorer” generation that’s looking to make their dollar last. As a particular and thorough buyer, they are going to comb through homes slowly, and really get into the nitty-gritty details with you. One way to avoid this laborious back-and-forth is to try and prep your house to be totally move-in ready for this incoming influx of buyers.