Boomers are changing retirement lifestyles and creating new baby boomer housing trends!
We want our housing to reflect our new active adult retirement lifestyle. We are not interested in senior ghettos with one room bed-sits. We don’t see ourselves as growing old; we are just going through another lifestyle change. And we fully intend to keep “living” in our retirement years.
Developers, Builders and Governments need to sit up and take notice of the tsunami that this new real estate trend represents. A recent study from the Conference Board of Canada predicted that by 2030 about 80% of new housing demand would be consumers in their retirement years. Better educated and far more demanding than any other senior group in the past, they need to “get” the kind of living we are planning on doing.
Who are we? What do we want?
Studies are showing us that there is no typical boomer family unit. There is enormous diversity within the Boomer Demographic: there are the Early Boomers (47-55) and the late Boomers (56-65). Some are single. Others are multi-generational; including aged parents, adult children and even grandchildren under one roof. And of course there are couples
Depending on our personal circumstances some of us are fully retired, others continue to work, full or part-time. Many have second homes, perhaps cottages or winter homes in warmer climates, where we spend significant amounts of time. Any and all of these factors will impact our choices and needs going forward.
Luckily many of us will have the financial means to enjoy our later years, with sufficient income from pensions, savings and/or inheritances, to help us maintain our standard of living. Kathryn Del Greco, senior advisor at TD Waterhouse Private Investment Advice, indicates within a decade Baby Boomers (born between 1946 and 1966) will control 72% of the wealth in Canada, up from 62% in 2004, from Investor Economics Inc.
Unfortunately not all Boomers will enjoy the same degree of comfort. Some of us are still carrying large debt loads from earlier financial decisions. Recent changes in Mandatory Retirement legislation allows Boomers to continue to work past the 65 mark, if they need or want to do so. In fact for 48 % of us, work is exactly what we plan to do. Boomers plan to be in the work force for years to come and this too will impact our decision on where and how we will live out the last third of our lives.
Clearly there is no one size fits all solution for the kind of home or community Boomers want or need. But that doesn’t mean we don’t share some very basic criteria on how we will evaluate our “next” home.
In my next blog post, I will look at the 5 Criteria that baby boomers use, consciously or not, to decide on where and what we buy or if in fact we move at all! And a word to the wise, it’s these criteria that will in fact shape baby boomer housing trends for the next thirty years to come.
Great article, and it’s time that companies start to re-evaluate their marketing strategies, and maybe target the generation that has the spending power now and in the future.
How true. It is high time that we, those of maturity are taken seriously —- I may be old but not invisible
It’s very true that retailers and Governments seem to be ignoring the boomer generation. Retailers seem to direct their products and marketing efforts to the young (who have no money) or jump over the boomers to the aged. The boomers who have both money, health and a zest for life seemto be largely y ignored.
Great piece! You are absolutely correct that boomers will revolutionize retirement housing trends just as they have every market category through the years.
What frustrates me is that gov, builders and others assume that boomers will age the same as previous generations. I doubt that boomers will take up knitting, crochet, doily making and collecting flowered china. I doubt that boomers would even consider living in “retirement apartments” that are so small the whole thing could fit into a walk in closet.
Boomers do not want to be called seniors and will redefine the concept of aging and retirement.
My company has the mission of ‘Making Seniors Matter Again’, and we are focused on training professionals in effective communication with seniors and leading-edge boomers. Our focus has been on the real estate profession and seniors, but in the last year, we have moved focus to cover any profession and the cross-generational communication challenges people face, and how to solve them.
What has been astonishing to me is how many types of businesses are placing their entire focus on Millennials, and ignoring seniors and boomers.
Every comment prior to mine has nailed it, and Janet Ethier really nailed the piece I am most passionate about – the increasing invisibility of seniors and boomers.