Finding the right mix of housing to accommodate current and future homeowners and renters is among the head-scratchers in store for Scott County in the coming decades.
These challenges and others were outlined by real estate experts at a workshop for civic leaders, at which they stressed that the needs of millennials won't necessarily be the same as for their parents.
James Vagle, public policy director for the Builders Association of the Twin Cities, a nonprofit trade association that promotes builders and suppliers, guided the group through a presentation that showed the local housing market was growing again, despite being weighed down by rising regulatory costs.
"Frankly, it costs more to build homes here," Vagle said.
Besides opening more lots in "key locales," he suggested that communities consider building affordable houses and townhouses to entice millennials, whose fickle buying habits have long flummoxed developers and Realtors, to become homeowners.
"Frankly, we obsess about what they want to do, because we need to know what they're about to do," Vagle told the audience, of about 50, to a round of chuckles.
He pointed to Eden Gardens, an energy-efficient 36-unit townhouse development being planned for Eden Prairie, as a shining example of how communities are catering to millennials, who expect "efficiency and sustainability."
While unemployment is low, hovering at around 4 percent, he pointed out that the twin problems of underemployment and "confidence issues" of homeowners scarred by the foreclosure crisis — the "ready-to-buy-again generation" as one presenter called them — persist.
