SAN FRANCISCO—“Young adult population boom has fueled the apartment sector, and that boom should extend another decade… It has been one of the big demand drivers. A big part of the story is that we have so many young adults in the prime renting age renting a good chuck of those apartments.” So said Jay Parsons, national market analysis manager of MPF Research, who served as panelist of a PCBC session titled: “Not Our Parents' House,” a panel about who are Gen Y renters and what do they want?

According to Parsons, it is very hard to figure out this generation. He pointed out that the Millennial population has been slower to marry and become financially independent and they express less interest in “worldly” goods. Whether this is a result of the Great Recession, a change in values, student loan debt, or difficulties in finding well-paying jobs, it's vital that we learn how these consumers will affect the economy—and real estate—in material ways,” he added. “We see all these contradictions about this generation; it is diverse group that is very complicated.”

According to Tyler Washburn, a designer at PRDG LLC, the urban setting is a key part, but he says that a developer doesn't need to over-provide when I comes to amenities, because everything is just outside and down the street. “As long as you have the big common spaces for people to hang out…it is about being alone in a crowd…the coffee shop mentality.”