NEW YORK CITY—Their influence on macroeconomic drivers, and therefore on commercial real estate, is everywhere to be seen. Whether it's office location decisions on the basis of the workers' convenience rather than the CEO's or the proliferation of big-box logistics warehouses to accommodate the move toward e-commerce, Millennials are shaping the conversation. A new report from JLL on national construction trends illustrates one more sign of this demographic group's power: tenant improvements to attract Millennial talent.

“Millennials are shaping how and where we work—and also how and where we shop, and even the path our packages take from ship to doorstep,” says Todd Burns, president of JLL Project and Development Services, Americas. “By 2020, the US workforce will be comprised of 50% Millennials, more than all other generations combined. Individually, they may not realize that they're influencing national construction trends to favor tenant improvement over new construction, but the numbers show it's no coincidence.”

The report says that office-using tenants are focused on accommodating their Millennial employees and their preference for offices in existing urban locations that are close to amenities. Frequently, these properties come with unique, open interior spaces, such as the high ceilings found in the TAMI enclave of Hudson Square n New York City—due to their origins as industrial buildings early in the previous century. As companies start to renovate and occupy older buildings, office space vacancies are slowly declining and have fallen 10.2% since the second quarter of 2011.

“Construction costs remain high and the amount of available stock is increasing rapidly, so many tenants are focused on renovating rather than building new,” says Dana Westgren, JLL industry research analyst. “Economics, however, are not the whole story. Millennials want everything nearby. Same-day delivery trends favor renovating urban warehouses, while the same cultural preferences favor trendy offices in renovated urban lofts. It's all interrelated.”

Millennials aren't the only demographic group to exert an influence on commercial real estate over the 15 years that GlobeSt.com has covered the industry. The parents of many Millennials, Baby Boomers similarly are making an impact on the industry, not only through sheer numbers, but also due to their preferences.

The oldest members of this generation turned 65 in 2011, and 10,000 more will follow suit each day through 2029. That helps to explain not only the boom in healthcare real estate, but also the location and design elements. Medical office is moving away from its associations with hospital campuses, for example, while seniors housing is evolving into the kind of facilities that Boomer would want to be in.

“As the Baby Boomer generation transitions into the senior-living population, this group will have the ability to pick and choose the amenities they want,” Kasey Burke, president of Meta Housing Corp., told GlobeSt.com's Carrie Rossenfeld in 2014. “As a result, today's developers need to be anticipating the needs and wants of the Baby Boomers.

One of the ways that has played out is what Brendan Morrow, director of senior living for the Weitz Co., called “a significant movement within the high-acuity environments to strip away the physical reminders of the health needs. We are seeing a move toward healthcare buildings that look like mid- to high-level hotels.

“Just because you are stuck rehabbing a hip or from a heart issue doesn't mean you want to feel like you are in a healthcare setting,” Morrow told Rossenfeld last year. “Food quality is improving, and room service is becoming the norm. There is also a focus on visitor comfort for when family is there—Wi-Fi, coffee bars, etc.”

Of course, seniors housing isn't the only residential product type in which Baby Boomers' preferences must be taken into account. A report earlier this year from Jordan Rappaport, senior economist with the Kansas City Federal Reserve, found that older Americans are “increasingly downsizing” to apartments. This switch generally begins at around age 70 and becomes more common by age 75, Rappaport wrote.

And when they do make the switch, Boomers may not be satisfied with existing apartment spaces, necessitating more development to accommodate them, according to Rappaport. “In the long run, seniors (ages 70 and above) will likely supplant young adults as the main drivers in multifamily home construction,” he wrote. (For a fuller discussion of whether Baby Boomers or Millennials are the key force behind multifamily development, be sure to attend this year's RealShare Apartments conference, scheduled for Oct. 21-22 at the Westin Bonaventure in Los Angeles.)

Not necessarily in multifamily, but certainly in other sectors, a growing source of funding is coming from another demographic group whose influence as well as size has grown since 2000: immigrants. Specifically, foreigners taking advantage of the EB-5 program that allows for establishment of permanent residence in the US to foreigners who invest either $500,000 (for high-unemployment areas) or $1 million (for low-unemployment areas) into an at-risk US entity that creates at least 10 full-time direct and indirect jobs.

Jim Turco, president of American Gateway Regional Centers in Anaheim Hills, CA, told GlobeSt.com in 2013 that the EB-5 program was a huge draw for Chinese investors, who can send their children to the US and give them an American education from elementary school through college. “Four years after they first apply, they get a permanent green card,” Turco told Rossenfeld. “So you have an intelligent, hard-working, young student that has gone through the US school system. They are pretty well settled into the US way of doing things and want to stay here.”

Although immigration has brought the Asian population to more than 50% of the total in a number of high-density US cities, immigrants from Latin American countries have also come to the US in large numbers. They're having an impact in a number of ways, not least of which is shopping, where they wield more than $1 trillion annually in spending power.

“It is a different consumer,” Vanessa Delgado, director of development at Primestor Development, told GlobeSt.com's Debra Hazel in 2013. “You can't look at these demographics the same way you look at everything else. You will be behind the curve if you wait another 10 years to look at this model, because by then the very loyal Hispanic shopper will have already gravitated toward a particular tenant, and they will stick with that tenant because they believed in them. The loyal shopper will stay with the tenant who took the risk.”