Sunday Snippets: Did You Know?

* Tech meets TREES? 🤔 Trees help with stormwater attenuation, store carbon, improve air quality, provide shade for humans and offer habitats for wildlife…..but as the climate changes, some trees are not surviving/thriving in their current habitat and arborists are identifying the trees that will survive and thrive going forward. i-Tree is a state-of-the-art, peer-reviewed software suite from the USDA Forest Service that provides urban and rural forestry analysis and benefits assessment tools. (FT)

* The median age of a US homebuyer has risen from 31 in 1981 to around 45! If we average leaving home around the age of 20 and rent for 25 years before buying, that equates to $300k lost to rent if your rent is $1,000/month….. $600k if it’s $2,000/month…..and $ 1million if you average $3,333/month! (FT)

* Gen Z — those born between 1997 and 2012 — has become the most active faction in the housing market, flocking to major cities that some claimed were doomed in the pandemic. Manhattan’s social scene and job climate led to a 63% jump in Gen Z rental applications year-over-year. Zoomers made up 27% of Manhattan renters last year, up from 17% the year before as they contend with an increasingly tight market. Other major cities to see a spike in its share of Gen Z renters include San Jose (52%), Los Angeles (45%) and Irving, Texas (37%). Gen Z is the only generation to have its activity surge in the past year. There were 220,000 more rental applications from Zoomers in 2021 than the year before, making up 27% of the rental application market, trailing only millennials (45%). So yes, I was not hallucinating when I noticed everyone around me getting younger and prettier in Manhattan! (RENT CAFE)

* The number of unincorporated self-employed people in the U.S. reached 10 million in February, or 400,000 more than when the pandemic began. It soared as high as 10.3 million last summer. Being a self-employed, independent contractor has pro’s and con’s! (WSJ) (more…)