OK this makes sense. We're all getting older - hopefully. As we do we sort of naturally want to do more of the things we like to do in the settings we like to do them. For many of the boomer generation that means the mountains. Some like the awful heat of the desert. Ah, but I'll take the Gulf Shore any day.
Plenty of demand and they're not making any more Gulf Coast real estate. It all bodes well for your average gulf coast vacation real estate professional.
Realtors hope boomers will rekindle housing market
As the 2006 high season ends, local builders, investors and real estate salespeople with unsold homes, are still counting on retiring Northern baby boomers to re energize the local housing market.Born between 1946 and 1958, baby boomers are the children of GIs who returned home from World War II. The oldest of the 76 million baby boomers are turning 60 this year. Some are already starting to retire. The rest are in their peak earning years in a strong national economy.
Soaring home prices in Northern states have made it possible for families who want to flee the winter cold and snow to buy retirement property in Florida. Others have already invested funds in our hot market.
Vacation and investment-home sales set records nationally in 2005, according to the National Association of Realtors (NAR). Based on two surveys, NAR reports 27.7 percent of all homes sold in 2005 were purchased as an investment and 12.2 percent were vacation homes.
Investors facing a difficult stock market, starting with the end of the dot-com boom in 2000 and 2001, and getting very low interest rates, Florida home sales soared. Then, last fall, as the government raised interest rates, our real estate market (along with sales in much of the nation) began to cool. Read more