How to Market: Generation YLure young home buyers with lots of options.

If the would-be buyers browsing your models seem a bit young, it's not your imagination. Members of the Millennium Generation--aka Generation Y or the Echo Boomers--are poised to purchase property at a younger age than their parents did but with a little help from Mom and Dad.

Couple the family's contribution with low interest rates, and the under-30 crowd is officially in the market for a mortgage. The U.S. Census Bureau says 40 percent of 25- to 29-year-olds who are heads of their households own their homes, and 26 percent of heads of households younger than 25 are owners. Likewise, the NAHB estimates that while Gen Yers owned just 7 percent of U.S. houses in 2005, 26 percent of them plan to buy homes this year.

How to market

If you'd like them to buy one of yours, lure them with options--from colors to quality. These downtown-bound, technology-savvy, and very social young residents want to live in hip, unique, even offbeat spaces that look nothing like the homes they grew up in. Their choice of builder: the one who offers the option for a custom look on a modest budget.

And while their entry-level incomes may limit how many square feet they can afford, Echo Boomers want to live large in their small spaces. A builder who dresses up a small condo or townhome with even a single luxury could snag the sale.

Where to place the bait? The kitchen.

Friends and entertaining are priorities for these children of the two-income, rarely home generation. And the kitchen is where they congregate. Adding a granite countertop or stainless steel appliances to this favorite room can make a decidedly demure first home feel grand to young buyers and their guests.

While a costly countertop could seal the deal, a lack of technology could sour it. Young buyers not only expect their abodes to abound with accommodations for Internet connections, multiple printers and scanners, and entertainment centers, they'll be shopping for their first homes online. They want to take virtual tours, get quick answers to questions and track the progress of construction any time of day or night via their computers.

And they want all that in a fairly no-nonsense package. A builder Web site that forces the viewer to wait for huge photo files to download or to wade through too much promotional information is likely to cause young home buyers to lose patience and move onto a friendlier site. Load your site with information and make it interactive--and save the self promotion for other advertising outlets.

Your youngest buyers might not be able to spend the most on their homes, but they are likely to buy another one in short order. While their parents bought their first homes as a long-term nesting place, their children look at theirs as a short-term investment, a Century 21 Real Estate survey reveals. When they get their first big raise at their first big job, they'll trade up.

A focus on this fresh, young market could convince them to buy their family-sized second homes from you, too.

--BUILDING PRODUCTS

Sharon O'Malley is a College Park, Md.-based freelance writer with more than 10 years of experience writing about the building industry. She can be reached at somalley@hanleywood.com.